Saddam Hussein and Capital’s Moral Defeat

Consider the scene in Firdos Square, Baghdad, April 9, 2003: A statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled by US Marines, among a throng of rejoicing Iraqis. The event is immediately construed by Western media as a symbol of the fall of his regime and a happy ending to the war. President Bush declared it ‘a historic moment.’

Shortly before it falls, the statue’s face is covered by an American flag—the very same Stars and Stripes that flew over the Pentagon when it was hit on September 11, 2001. The next day, 15,000 construction workers and firefighters—chanting USA! USA!—packed a noontime rally at ground zero, New York, in support of the war in Iraq, which, to many of them, began right there on September 11, 2001. The Stars and Stripes was quickly replaced by the tricolour Iraqi flag, but the symbolism remains. It embodied the belief prevalent among America’s civilian and military populations that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is a war against terrorism. It symbolized the completion of an emotional journey; that the dead of 9/11 have been avenged.

Why has this belief taken such a hold on America? Even supporters of the war, when pressed, concede that there is no credible evidence to implicate Saddam Hussein or the Ba’athist regime with the events of that day in New York, rural Pennsylvania and Washington. An obvious explanation is that the Bush administration engineered this pretext to conceal its actual material and strategic interests in Iraq. If a lie is repeated often enough, people may eventually come to believe it. True enough, but there is something more, something else about Bush and Blair’s rationale for this war that so far has evaded its numerous critiques.

Suffer Injury: Inflict Pain

There is indeed a link between ‘9/11’ and ‘Iraq,’ but it is not cognitive and empirical. It is the moral and emotive connection between suffering an injury and inflicting pain. This connection is felt, not thought; it involves all the body, not just the head.

The moral connection between suffering an injury and inflicting pain was made famous by Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ circa 1596. Bassanio, a Christian merchant, borrows money from Shylock, a Jewish money-lender, using his friend Antonio as his bond. The penalty for a breach of this contract is a pound of Antonio’s ‘fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.’ When Bassanio defaults on the loan, Shylock refuses offers of financial compensation from third parties and insists on his pound of flesh. Why? Shylock refuses to answer this question—‘say it is my humour’—but it is because he wants the pleasure of inflicting suffering.