Saddam

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Saddam

Postby Wagner » 31 Dec 2006, 19:37

Corda no pescoço

Há uma diferença entre mim e alguns que me combatem: não quero meus inimigos com uma corda no pescoço. Eu os quero vivos. Não quero principalmente ganhar a guerra. Quero lutar. É uma opção ética. É uma opção, de certo modo, estética. Ainda que “eles” queiram me eliminar - e àqueles que pensam como eu. Mesmo que eu os presenteie com objetos preposicionados como esse, cheio de elegância, só para declarar a minha animosidade amorosa - fiel, para quem sabe, à etimologia. Porque há de haver uma elegância entre os duelistas, como no filme – conhecem? Ganhar não é nada. Guerrear é tudo. A única vitória está na disputa.

Um esquerdista jamais entenderá do que falo. Ele sempre sabe aonde a história quer chegar. Eu não sei. Como Fernando Pessoa, o céu e a terra me bastam. Os que têm a forma do futuro estão tão certos de tudo. Eu estou certo apenas das minhas opiniões. E, na minha opinião, um homem com uma corda no pescoço é sempre deprimente. E agora direi algo “só para loucos, só para raros” (cito o Hesse de O Lobo da Estepe): é ainda mais triste um homem que já foi poderoso com a corda no pescoço. É razoável a suposição de que a forca e a força que o matam são mais íntimas do ressentimento do que da Justiça. Às vezes, acho que são sentimentos demais pra nossa condição tão miserável.

Aquela foto de Saddam Hussein com uma corda no pescoço obscureceu minhas idéias luminosas sobre o triunfo de um civilização, de uma raça – a nossa, a dos humanos vira-latas -, de um modo de vida. Eu sei que ele matou. Eu sei que ele roubou. Eu sei que ele estuprou, ainda que por meio de terceiros. Mas que coisa! Minhas ambições não têm morte. Minhas ambições não têm roubo. Minhas ambições não têm estupro. Tão demasiadamente humano, coloco-me como o último na escola dos que julgam; o último na escala dos que apontam o dedo; o último na hierarquia dos bons. Como o Pessoa do Poema em Linha Reta, todos os meus conhecidos têm sido campeões em tudo. Eu não consigo declarar a morte de um pernilongo chato numa casa à beira da praia sem que me assalte um dilema moral. Ele pode até ser tão breve quanto a vida de um pernilongo, ou tão inútil, mas estou inteiro em cada coisa. Estou inteiro naquele tapa. Sou inteiramente eu – e responsável – naquela sentença.

Aí me acusam ou me interrogam: “Mas como foi que um ex-esquerdista, mesmo trotskista, tornou-se tão anticomunista?” Aconteceu porque sei a dor e a delícia de não ter chefes ideológicos, de não poder atribuir a ninguém um gesto, uma sentença, um disparate. Todas as grandezas e todos os lixos do mundo me pertencem. Ah! Os petralhas são tão grandes e tão senhores de si. Eu sou porcaria. Eles celebram cantos de vitória. Eu topo ficar recolhendo os restos, os guardanapos amassados da festa, os copos de refrigerante quente pela metade, os doces só mordiscados e logo desprezados, as concentrações – acho, mas não estou certo, que a imagem é de Musil – das procissões que vão se dispersando. Ali, e este sou eu, onde a fé é mais rarefeita, onde todas as precariedades humanas se juntam num misto de dedicação e descrença. Eu sou este aí: dedicado e descrente, espreguiçando-se quando Deus se anunciou. Incrédulo.

Santo Deus! Eu nada tenho a fazer com cordas no pescoço. Nem no pescoço dos meus inimigos. Sobretudo no pescoço dos meus inimigos. Porque, vejam só, encontrasse eu uma justificativa para cena tão patética, eles estariam certos a meu respeito. Mas estão errados. E, por isso, são meus inimigos. Eu sou a vida e seu ofício. E eles contam os seus mártires, os seus heróis, jactam se duas paixões homicidas e suicidas. Eu acho a morte aquém e além de qualquer contenda. Que moral pode existir na morte? Que ética? Como pode nos sugerir o que quer que seja quem é tão íntimo do absoluto? Como é que um juiz consegue escolher o que comer ou a cor da própria cueca depois de decidir que alguém deve morrer? Se eu arbitrasse sobre a vida, não aceitaria nada além do absoluto.
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Postby mends » 02 Jan 2007, 08:34

Devo confessar que senti um "prazer sádico" em vê-lo com a corda no pescoço. mas como não somos cachorros, a racionalidade implica em controlar nossos impulsos, mesmo os prazerosos. Deixa eu tentar um paralelo aqui: hanna arendt, uma filósofa da chamada "escola de frankfurt" (que reunia gente verdadeiramente inteligente e esquerdistas patéticos), acompanhou, como correspondente da New Yorker, o julgamento de Eichmann (Adolf Otto Eichmann (1906-1962), criminoso nazista) em Jerusalém. Esse episódio se transformou em um grande livro, "Eichmann em Jerusalém - Um Relato sobre a Banalidade do Mal".

A expressão "banalidade do mal" foi foco de discórdia por ter sido vista como trivialização do ocorrido. A banalidade do mal estava ligada à incapacidade de pensar e à execução automática de tarefas do burocrata moderno. Eichmann não era um monstro (Sadam era?), mas era difícil não desconfiar que fosse um palhaço (Sadam era). Até suas últimas palavras foram frases feitas, como foram clichés os gestos de Sadam. Diante dessas palavras, Hannah Arendt explicou por que teria sido levada a adotar a expressão "banalidade do mal": foi como se naqueles últimos minutos estivesse resumindo a lição que este longo curso de maldade humana nos ensinou - a lição da temível banalidade do mal, que desafia as palavras e os pensamentos, as definições e a racionalidade. O regime de Sadam era, até onde sei, a "banalidade do Mal" em si, com cargo público de "desonrador", por exemplo, caras cuja única funçãom era estuprar mulheres na frente dos maridos/pais/filhos capturados pelo regime.

Arendt: "Faz parte da própria natureza das coisas humanas que cada ato cometido e registrado pela história da humanidade fique com a humanidade como uma potencialidade muito depois da sua efetividade ter-se tornado coisa do passado. Nenhum castigo jamais possuiu poder suficiente para impedir a perpetração de crimes". Mas não é por isso que se deve deixar de castigar. Mas até onde vai o castigo? O que diferencia a forca da "banalidade do Mal"? Se somos pela racionalidade, devemos ser contra a pena de morte. Mesmo quando gostaríamos de ter assistido pela TV, como eu gostaria. A razão serve pra bloquear nossas emoções.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
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Postby mends » 02 Jan 2007, 09:02

editorial do Wall Street Journal

Justice for a Tyrant
January 2, 2007; Page A22
The debate over Iraq has become so poisonous that even the weekend death sentence for Saddam Hussein seems to have become morally controversial. So it's worth recalling that what happened early Saturday morning in Baghdad is that rare event -- justice for a tyrant after a fair and open trial.

Most of the world's dictator-killers escape such a reckoning. Stalin and Mao died in their own beds. Hitler escaped the hangman by committing suicide, while Nicolae Ceausescu was shot by a vengeful mob after a perfunctory trial. Idi Amin and Pol Pot were ousted from power but lived into old age without punishment. Slobodan Milosevic made it to trial but died before a verdict could be rendered. Others -- Castro, Kim Jong Il -- live on in power, terrorizing their countrymen to this day.

Saddam may not have been history's worst murderer, but he was an accomplished one. He began as a Baath Party assassin, rose after a 1968 coup to become Iraq's feared vice president and intelligence chief, and consolidated his power in 1979 with a videotaped purge of his enemies, nearly 500 of whom were soon dead.

There followed the invasion of Iran, the gassing of the Kurds, the looting of Kuwait, more slaughter of Kurds and Shiites, an attempt on the life of a former U.S. President, and support for international terrorism. The precise number of Saddam's victims is impossible to know. But add the Iraqi estimate of 400,000 bodies found in mass graves to the casualties during his wars with Iran, Kuwait and the U.S.-led coalition, and his death total may equal two million.

There would surely have been more. Never mind that no stockpiles of chemical weapons were found in Iraq after 2003. Saddam was the only living national leader to have ordered the use of chemical weapons -- twice. Were he still in power today, does anyone doubt he would be racing with Iran to obtain a nuclear bomb?

Saddam's trial had its critics, just as Nuremberg did in its time. But the dictator received far more due process than his own victims ever did. He was able to play to the cameras of al Jazeera, giving the illusion to his former allies in the insurgency that he might return. He could denounce his Iraqi judges as American stooges, though the U.S. studiously left his fate to Iraqis and even protected Saddam in captivity from vengeful ill-treatment. What the dictator could not do is gainsay the evidence of his guilt, which ran to thousands of exhibits and pages of testimony and would have included hundreds of witnesses had the other cases against him gone forward.

His hanging will not end the violence in Iraq, but it is important for that country's future nonetheless. It will reassure majority Shiites that Saddam's day is finally past, making it easier for the moderates among them to compromise with Sunnis on the shape of their government. The anti-Saddam taunts of a few of his executioners were tasteless, but they also show the catharsis his death represents.

Perhaps the more important effect will be on the psychology of Iraq's Sunnis. Many of them actually did believe that Saddam might return to power, just as Saddam told them he would in his televised trial proceedings. And they continued to believe that Saddam could punish "traitors," like a mafia don, from his jail cell. As Shiite leader Ayad Jamal al-Deen remarked, "The death of this man will help to release many Baathists from Saddam's mafia."

The world will have to endure future tyrants, but Saddam's hanging will have done some larger good if it gives even one of them pause to think he might suffer the same justice. Too often, faced with murderous dictators, the world's moralists demand that America "do something" (Darfur, Bosnia) only to shrink from the reality of what that requires. In Iraq, President Bush did something. The 3,000 Americans who have given their lives in that noble mission have done so in a just cause that rid the world of a man who might have killed hundreds of thousands more.
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
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Postby mends » 02 Jan 2007, 09:13

So, Saddam Is Dead . . .
By MARK BOWDEN
January 2, 2007; Page A23

Now that they have hanged Saddam Hussein, perhaps we can begin to appreciate the irony and the lessons of his demise.

Any nation is, at heart, an idea. Once people started organizing themselves in groups larger than their own blood lines, they had to invent reasons for considering themselves part of something bigger -- tribes, city states, feudal kingdoms, nations, empires. Language, customs, religion, ideology and geographic proximity have all served. The idea of a state that accepts as equal citizens people from all corners of the globe, a nation founded on abstract principles, is a relative newcomer. We have been trying to get the people inhabiting a large swath of land between and on both sides of the Tigris and Euphrates to embrace the concept. It is an ongoing struggle with less-than-encouraging results.


One of our better allies in promoting this idea was none other than Saddam, who may have died the last true believer in a multiethnic, nonsectarian Iraq. He made his idea of Iraq real by ruthlessly suppressing dissent, particularly with the Shiite majority, by enforcing obedience from Sunnis and the Kurds, and by resisting (or co-opting) the vision of Islamist radicals. American leaders wrestling with Moqtada al-Sadr and his ilk have doubtlessly found themselves admiring the dictator's success, if not his methods.

The old tyrant had long been out of touch with his country, locked behind the high walls of his palaces, protected by body doubles and flattering liars, moving from secret bed to secret bed. The hand-written letter he purportedly released from prison last week, when it became apparent he was to be executed, showed once more how disconnected he was. He addressed the Iraqi people as one, and encouraged them to rise up against the American occupiers. "Do not trust those who speak of Shias and Sunnis," he wrote. Except for the part about attacking Americans, it might have been written by one of the Pentagon's propaganda contractors.

In fact, no one who cares about the idea of Iraq is rooting for the U.S. to depart any time soon. Saddam could be excused, perhaps, because he had lived in a fantasy world for years. Those who advocate it here are transparently heedless of its consequences in Iraq, the operative notion being to avoid shedding more American blood for a cause deemed hopeless or unworthy or both. Unless something dramatic happens soon to alter the sorry trends, it will eventually be the policy of our country.

Saddam had long since ceased to be the beloved figure he believed himself to be. In this stubborn insurgency there has been little evidence of him as a rallying point. His death did not provoke violent recriminations or even much angry rhetoric. Once he was toppled, once deprived of his vicious state apparatus, he ceased to be relevant. Just as the resistance never stopped or even slowed after his capture, the deaths of his sons or the arrests or killings of the other leading Baathist figures on the notorious U.S. military deck of cards, it will not be affected by his death. Saddam was bigger than the bloody divisions that now preoccupy his people. None of the various murderous factions are fighting for his vision of a greater Iraq. The Sunnis are fighting to resist Shiite domination, the Shiites to rid themselves of Sunni oppression, and the Islamists just to frustrate the democratic vision of the U.S.

We Americans consistently underestimate the deep hatreds that divide people. Our political system is designed to wrestle peacefully with the divisions of race, class, ethnicity, religion and competing ideological or geographical interests, and has generally worked as intended -- the Civil War being the one glaring exception. Generations have struggled to live up to ideals of tolerance and diversity. When we look out at the world, we tend to see millions longing to get past the blood feuds, to be, in short, more like us. George Bush and the neocon intellectuals who led us into Iraq are just the latest in a long line of evangelical Americanists. No matter how many times history slaps us in the face, the dream persists.

Nine years ago, in the epilogue to "Black Hawk Down," I quoted an unnamed State Department official (he was Michael Sheehan, ambassador for counter-terrorism) as follows: "The idea used to be that terrible countries were terrible because good, decent, innocent people were being oppressed by evil, thuggish leaders. Somalia changed that. Here you have a country where just about everybody is caught up in the fighting. You stop an old lady on the street and ask her if she wants peace, and she will say, 'Yes, of course, I pray for it daily.' All the things you would expect her to say. Then ask her if she would be willing for her clan to share power with another to have that peace, and she'll say, 'With those murderers and thieves? I'd die first.' People in these countries . . . don't want peace. They want victory. They want power. Men, women, old, and young. Somalia was the experience that taught us that people in these places bear much of the responsibility for things being the way they are. The hatred and killing continues because they want it to. Or because they don't want peace enough to stop it."

The statement is too harsh, as Mr. Sheehan himself agrees (he was at that point a veteran of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia). Any effort to characterize millions with the expression "these people" is unfair and wrong. But there is a principle here struggling to emerge: Before a state can exist where there are deep-rooted, competing interests, there must be some broadly accepted concept of a nation strong enough to at least compete with parochial interests. There must be some generally accepted idea of a nation.

Mr. Sheehan was wrong about one thing. Somalia didn't change anything. Substitute Iraq for Somalia in the quote, and the observation is as accurate today as then. Maybe we need to better appreciate that our nation remains an exception. I believe that in the long run people on this planet will embrace democracy and diversity, but we are not there yet. I still nurse hope that Iraqis will abandon blood feuds for compromise and a democratic future, but it appears to be a longer shot today than three years ago, and it was a bad bet then. Mr. Bush has staked his legacy on it.

So, the tyrant is dead. We may have facilitated his bad end, but, sadly, violence, oppression and fear remain the time-tested ways of forging a nation state out of disparate parts. Until Mr. Sheehan's doctrine is no longer true, the way of the world will remain Saddam's.

Mr. Bowden is the author, inter alia, of "Black Hawk Down" (Atlantic, 1999).
"I used to be on an endless run.
Believe in miracles 'cause I'm one.
I have been blessed with the power to survive.
After all these years I'm still alive."

Joey Ramone, em uma das minhas músicas favoritas ("I Believe in Miracles")
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