Badr Shakir al Sayyab and surreal Arab fantasies

Today I learned about Badr Shakir al Sayyab, the Iraqi poet who wrote "The Informer", which was used by the Angry Arab to condemn Mohammad Dahlan in a post. Today a Jordanian American named Habis used the poem to condemn me as a traitor, apparently because I remind people of Saddam's horrors and I support democracy in Iraq. Habis has accused me of supporting the US invasion. I had nothing to do with the invasion, but I was always in favor of assisting the Iraqi people in overthrowing the tyrant, the mass murderer of Iraqis.

I had nothing to do with the 1991 invasion either, but I remember very well how differently the Arabs reacted to that war, during which the US and its allies bombed Iraq for 40 consecutive days and nights, with smart bombs and conventional bombs and definitely the most bombs dropped on an Arab nation in the history of the world. The Arab "resistance" did not respond by sending hundreds of suicide bombers to fight the American invaders in Iraq in 1991. The Arabs did not care how many bombs were dropped on Iraq, as long as Saddam stayed in charge, and stay in charge he did, mass murdering more Iraqis along the way and building dozens of palaces while ordinary Iraqis struggled to survive.

The Arabs were relatively happy throughout the 90s and many of them moved to America to take advantage of its great freedoms and opportunities. It was only after America toppled the hero of the Arab world, Saddam, and put him on trial for crimes against humanity, that the Arabs and "Ummah" unleashed their arsenal of suicide bombers, many of whom were convinced that killing "apostates" will be rewarded by Allah after the appropriate fatwas were issued.

Clearly the Arabs do not care about Iraqis as much as they care about Sunni domination in Iraq. Many Iraqis are shocked to see Arab poets praising Saddam, and I am shocked to see Arab Americans using an Iraqi poem to condemn Iraqis who only want peace and democracy in Iraq. It is bizarre.

To add to the surreal irony and hypocrisy, Badr Shakir al Sayyab was a Basrawi and a communist. The Ba3ath party killed communists!

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."

"According to Western scholars, as well as Iraqi refugees and a British human rights organization, the 1963 coup was accompanied by a bloodbath. Using lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the C.I.A., the Baathists systematically murdered untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite -- killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. No one knows the exact toll, but accounts agree that the victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures."

So Saddam learned how to mass murder Iraqis as an employee of the CIA. It was the 60s! Badr Shakir al Sayyab surely knew of these events. He died of a degenerative nervous disorder at the end of 1964, almost two years after Saddam and his gang killed Abdul Karim Qasim. His poem "The Informer" could have been about Saddam and the Iraqis who were determined to imprison or kill Iraqi communists:

I am what you want: I am contemptible
The shoe shiner for the conquerors,
and the vendor of blood
and conscience for tyrants.
I am a crow
feeding off the corpses of chicken.
I am destruction,
I am ruination!
The lip of the harlot
is more chaste than my heart,
and the wings of flies
are purer and warmer than my hands.
As you wish...
I am contemptible!.."

The Arabs apparently do not understand that Saddam was an informer, that he became the tyrant, the conqueror wannabe. Saddam led Iraq to destruction, to ruination! Saddam and his gang of thieves and thugs were contemptible!

Update: Badr Shakir al-Sayyab "started his career as a Marxist, but reverted to mainstream nationalism without ever becoming fanatical."