Saddam's Generals and Modernization

On 2004 June 25, Asia Times Online published the story of a meeting with several of Saddam Hussein's generals. The author, Alix de la Grange, said that

.. former Saddam Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their clandestine positions for a while to explain their version of events and talk about their plans.

Because of its content, I doubt that the story is disinformation planted by the United States although it might be very clever disinformation. The story could come from anyone who wants to discourage fears that a US withdrawal would lead to an Iraqi civil war, and who wants to boost the Iraqi resistance. Every anti-US group in Iraq fits: Shi'ites not connected with Iran who fear that the US will protect their enemies, Shi'ites connected with Iran who fear the US, Sunnis who want to make an alliance with their previous local enemies, foreign jihadists who want to convince people that powerful Iraqis are against the US. Or, of course, the story might be true.

We knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with their technological and military power. The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In other words: the resistance. .... Our strategy was not improvised ....

I cannot imagine that any non-American general staff thinks it could win a conventional war with the US. Hence, it must plan on fighting an `assymetrical war'. Nothing else makes military sense.

One goal will be persuade the United States to accept defeat rather than victory, as in the Lebanon under President Reagan and in Somalia under President Clinton. This is means killing Americans regularly.

Clearly, the US can make two easy counter moves: it can remove its soldiers from Iraqi cities, so they become less of a target, and it can transfer the official government to local people, so that US media pay less attention, as in Afghanistan. We see both happening.

A second goal will be to persuade the local people that rule by people from the previous regime is less of an evil than a government under the United States. Since people most value safety and law, in that order, the general staff need to create a perception of widespread killing, kidnapping, and looting. We also see this occurring.

... liberate Iraq and expel the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and install a secular democracy, but not the one imposed by the Americans. Iraq has always been a progressive country, we don't want to go back to the past, we want to move forward. ....

The claim to "install a secular democracy" contradicts the possibility that foreign jihadists are behind the story. Unless their psychological warfare department is very sophisticated, they would more likely simply skip the phrase. Either Shi'ite group would favor the phrase. So would various Sunnis. And, of course, Saddam's generals would use it. Historically, the Baathists have been a party that favors modernization rather than a return to the past. (As for the word `democracy', I doubt that anyone thinks it means anything different than it does in Egypt or Syria; the key word here is `secular'.)

All this fits with Reuven Brenner's classification of societies into `mobile' and `immobile': the Baathist party and Saddam Hussein's generals sought the advantages of a `mobile' country, and at first attacked some of the institutions of an `immobile' society, such as old religious powers. (Eventually, that attack ceased.)

But several fundamental characteristics of an `immobile' society remained. In particular, the country suffered from a huge amount of corruption, much more than in the US, and individuals had a worse time obtaining non-clan, non-government sources of funding than entrepreneurs in the US.

(I am not saying that all is well in the US; it is not. The country contains corruption and backwardness. Many people have difficulty raising money. But compared to Iraq, it is relatively better.)