�We got him�. Ci son...

1972

lunedì, dicembre 15, 2003

«We got him». Ci sono giorni nei quali l’aver fortemente creduto in qualcosa perchè considerato giusto, legittimo e necessario ottiene la sua più grande ricompensa. Successe il 9 aprile quando ebbe fine il regime del terrore in Iraq.
E’ successo pochi giorni fa quando migliaia di iracheni in tutto il paese hanno manifestato contro il terrorismo. E’ successo di nuovo ieri quando il macellaio di Baghdad è stato tirato fuori dal buco nel quale si nascondeva e preso in consegna dalle forze della coalizione. Vedere la popolazione festeggiare la sua seconda liberazione e pensare che molto più vicino a noi oggi ci sono ancora persone che, come otto mesi fa, stanno masticando amaro costrette come sono ad imbarazzanti equilibrismi verbali e morali non fa che confortarci nella consapevolezza di aver sostenuto – nel nostro piccolo – l'unica causa sostenibile: quella dell’umanità contro i suoi assassini.
«Ladies and Gentlemen, We got him!» Sono le prime parole pronunciate da Paul Bremer nell’annunciare la cattura dell’ex dittatore e sono quelle che passeranno alla storia. Il discorso di Bush e quello di Blair. Thank you.
Il più rapido blogger iracheno nel dare la notizia è stato Sam nelle prime ore di ieri battendo sul tempo i colleghi con la sua personale breaking news.

It is a victory for the victims of his regime and the righteous people of Iraq and the WORLD at large.

L’emozione di Ays.

I can’t express my feelings.. thanks to the coalition forces and all the honest people who helped in that great operation….thank you thank you thousand times.

La testimonianza di Alaa.

The Ululation of Gunfire again; you should all be here now. What fireworks! You should be here. The Baghdadis are expressing what they really think again.

E quella di Fayrouz, iracheno in America.

I was really having a good week, I didn't know it would end up better than expected.
P.S. Samira (Saddam's second wife) :I'm sorry, no more phone calls from your loving husband. I hope you chock on the 5 million dollars he stole from the Iraqi people and gave you before the war started. I hope you enjoy your day like the rest of the world.

Omar.

It's indeed an inauspicious day for all the tyrants. Let them know that their days are near too.
This is the day of all Iraqi martyrs who were slaughtered just to please his sick lust for blood.
Rest in peace my brothers. The paradise is yours and the disgrace and hell is for all the tyrants on earth.
Thank you American, British, Spanish, Italian, Australian, Ukrainian, Japanese and all the coalition people and all the good people on earth.
God bless the 1st brigade.
God bless the 4th infantry division.
God bless Iraq.
God bless America.
God bless the coalition people and soldiers.
God bless all the freedom loving people on earth.
I wish I could hug you all.

Altre immagini dal Time.

Jim Hoagland sul Washington Post.

Saddam Hussein's ignominious surrender captured the essence of his quarter-century of misrule over Iraq: He was exposed as a blustering fraud who robbed his people to line his own pockets and to satisfy his monumental vanity. In the end he could not escape his own personality or the pursuing U.S. Army.

His being caught "like a rat," in the words of Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno, will help puncture the myth that the terrorist insurgency being led by Hussein's Baathist remnants represents a heroic form of Iraqi or Arab nationalism. The campaign they wage is a rear-guard attempt to regain privilege and domination by a small group of Sunni Arabs, who have used death and destruction as their only tools of governance and now of rebellion.

William Safire sul NYT.

We are not finished with this remorseless monster; Saddam will have his day in an Iraqi court. But so will the ghosts of poison-gassed Halabja and Iraqi children forced to clear minefields in Iran. The meticulous presentation of his offenses against humanity will demonstrate again that all that would have been necessary for the triumph of evil was for good people to do nothing.

Ernesto Galli della Loggia parla della lezione americana all'Europa.

Per la prima volta dopo il 1945 - e di nuovo grazie al ruolo e alle capacità americane - è possibile che si ripeta quanto accadde in quel tempo, allorché il nazismo tedesco e il militarismo nipponico furono portati alla sbarra di un tribunale e, per suo tramite, sottoposti al giudizio dell’opinione pubblica del mondo.

Per la prima volta, e per giunta su un piano simbolico violentissimo, l’Islam sarà chiamato a guardare in faccia alcune delle sue storiche contraddizioni e la sua semisecolare miseria politica. Chi può dire quale effetto tutto ciò sortirà su quel mondo, sulla sua opinione pubblica e, non da ultimo, sui regimi dispotici che ancora per intero lo governano? Di ogni effetto positivo il merito andrà comunque agli Stati Uniti, alla loro tenacia, alla loro determinazione.

Perché tra le lezioni della cattura di Saddam c’è pure questa: di fronte alla chiarezza di obiettivi degli Stati Uniti (obiettivi discutibili, certo, ma reali e plausibili), di fronte alla loro capacità di perseguirli muovendosi sulla scena del mondo, di fronte al loro impegno, che in fin dei conti è anche morale, di rispondere al terrorismo colpo su colpo, di fronte a tutto ciò cosa ha saputo pensare, cosa ha saputo proporre, cosa ha saputo fare l’Europa? Nulla, nulla di serio e di vero.

Il Foglio esce in edizione speciale.

Bravi, e nel giusto. They got him! Gli americani hanno ricevuto un sacco di belle lezioni in questi otto mesi che separano la cattura di Saddam Hussein dalla liberazione di Baghdad. Ne riceveranno anche in futuro. Come ci ha detto la settimana scorsa Donald Rumsfeld, sorridendo, nessun membro della nomenklatura occidentale, quella dei “non volenterosi”, accetterà mai la loro vittoria strategica: liberazione di un paese dal suo regime terrorista, ricostruzione di una democrazia rappresentativa, sacrificio di uomini e risorse per la pace e la sicurezza del mondo. Ci sarà sempre qualcosa che non va ancora, qualche malaugurio, qualche coda filistea che scodinzola per paura di un futuro migliore, per conservare il peggio del passato. E lasciamoli scodinzolare, lasciamogli la Schadenfreude di pensare che comunque il terrorismo, anzi la “resistenza”, non è sconfitto, che il problema è un altro, che loro sì che sanno cosa bisogna fare, che tutto lì puzza di petrolio, che è un nuovo Vietnam, un incubo e una sconfitta, che ci vuole l’Onu, questa organizzazione di burocrati fuggiaschi, e magari che i contratti per le opere pubbliche irachene vanno dati a francesi, tedeschi e russi per i meriti conquistati sul campo, ma del nemico, altro che la Hallyburton. Intanto però le persone normali si fanno due conti, usano la ragione, concludono che i boots on the ground, i soldati americani, qualcosa di utile sanno combinarlo.

Amir Taheri, NYPost.

SOME wonder: Why was Saddam captured at this time?
One reason is that it was only three or four weeks ago that the U.S.-led coalition began seriously looking for him. A special task force was assigned to hunt down Saddam and the remaining figures on the notorious "pack of cards." Another reason is that the hunt, previously confined to the Coalition, was reorganized to give Iraqis a greater role. The actual arrest was carried out by American troops. But the intelligence that led to it came from Iraqi individuals, including Sunni Muslims, both Kurds and Arabs. This was a joint U.S.-Iraqi operation, and an example of what could be achieved when the two work together.

Saddam has countless questions to answer (...) ALL those questions, however, must be left for another day.
"I don't want to talk politics today," said an Iraqi friend reached over the telephone in Baghdad yesterday.
He quoted lines by Jahiz, an Arab poet of the pre-Islamic era:
The dragon that hid the moon is gone,
The bloodsucker has vanished into the abyss.
Let me taste this day like the ripest of dates,
And come tomorrow to talk about the days to come.

Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek.

In his wrenching book on Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the dissident writer Kanan Makiya explained that the most powerful force keeping the cruel regime in power--more important than brute strength--was "an all-embracing atmosphere of fear." Aptly, Makiya titled his book "Republic of Fear."

It will not solve the very thorny issues that the transfer of power in Iraq has already begun to raise. But Saddam Hussein's capture is a great and pivotal event. The "Republic of Fear" is dead.

Peggy Noonan, Opinion Journal.

What do we learn? Well, as Samuel Johnson said, "Man needs more to be reminded than instructed," so what are we reminded of through the happy ending of this story?
That human agency works and is an active force in history. You don't have to sit back and accept; you don't have to continue to turn a blind eye; you don't have to sit and do nothing, because all action involves choice and all choice invites repercussion. You can move forward. You can take action. You can go in and remove a threat to the world. You can make the world safer. You can help people. Just because they live in Iraq and we don't bump into them every day doesn't mean they don't merit assistance and even sacrifice.

Lawrence Kaplan, The New Republic.

Yet ultimately the onus is still on President Bush. As with Uday and Qusay's deaths, Saddam's capture will buy the president time in Iraq. But how much time depends on whether the fighting subsides and whether Iraqification efforts yield measurable progress. If not, the public's support for the war, which will surely climb over the next few days, will just as surely return to its present levels in a few weeks or months.
But these are all mundane asides. We got the son of a bitch. And today, at least, it all seems worth it.

Austin Bay, Houston Chronicle.

Following his capture by U.S. troops in the 4th Infantry Division, the wasted and weary Butcher of Baghdad received medical aid. For genuine democrats, a disheveled mass murderer opening his mouth to say "Ahh" for the doctors is more than a perfect portrait of defeat. The once defiant thug who gassed Kurds and Iranians, threatened to "burn half of Israel," who raped Kuwait, who slaughtered Shia Arabs, who minced his Baghdad opponents in plastic shredders, who -- yes, the evidence is building --facilitated both secular and religious terrorists, gets instant health care at the hands of his American captors. Object lesson: The rule of law and basic respect for human rights means the worst among us will get an aspirin, once the bum's imprisoned.

CS Monitor, editoriale.

Just the news that the former dictator, once feared at home and by Iraq's neighbors, was captured on Saturday while cowering in a dark hole, lonely and resigned, should remind all those living under the abusive hand of unelected leaders that power lies not in persons or guns but in ballots, laws, and liberties, the real safeguards of human dignity.

Daily Telegraph, editoriale.

But the Iraqi people are the principal beneficiaries of yesterday's breakthrough. So too are the cowed populations of other repressive Middle Eastern regimes who can now see that despots can be defeated. It will not be lost on the "Arab street" that Saddam surrendered without firing a shot from the pistol he has carried since his youth, and that he opted out of the form of martyrdom he has urged upon so many of his countrymen, including his own sons. At times like this, people are reminded of the banality of evil: in Saddam's case, that evil had an extra dimension of sheer cowardice.

As Mr Bush emphasised yesterday, Saddam's capture does not mean that the coalition's problems in Iraq are over. Attacks will surely continue for some time, and may even escalate in the short term. But it changes the equation on the ground, and clears obvious obstacles to Iraq's emergence as the prosperous, free country it now has every chance of becoming.

To say that Iraqis should try Saddam according to their own traditions and law is not to lapse into bloodlust: it is a simple recognition that as the victims of his grotesque misrule, they have earned the right to determine his fate, so long as any judicial process is seen to be transparent and fair.