----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 13, 2002 5:13
PM
Subject: War as Sacrifice
In reviewing my research notes on the
First Gulf War, I came across a news report of a rally of August 26, 1990 of
men &women in Baghdad. The marchers shouted, "We will give our body and
blood to our President."
A news item of Thursday,
August 8, 2002 reported that 15,000 persons marched through Baghdad in a
90-minute display of support of the Iraqi President. They carried photographs
of Saddam Hussein and placards bearing slogans such as "long live Saddam." An
Iraqi man on the streets of the capital, Hadi Abbass, told Reuters's news
agency, "We are ready to sacrifice our blood, soul and children for the
president."
On August 27, 1990, UN Secretary General
Javier Perez de Cuellar was bewildered that Saddam would not agree to leave
Kuwait, knowing what the fate of the Iraqi people would be in the face of
American might. He said, "I cannot imagine that someone wants war for the
pleasure of killing his own people."
Why is it so
difficult to imagine that a leader provokes war in order to sacrifice his
people?
According to Carolyn Marvin, the "totem
secret"--that which is required to remain secret--is knowledge that "society
depends on the death of its own members at the hands of the group itself." She
observes that the "Irrefutable sign of national faith is making one's body an
offering, a sacrifice." Jean Elshtain notes that when a young man goes to war
he does so, not so much to kill as "to die, to forfeit his particular body for
that of the larger body, the body-politic." A willingness to die represents a
demonstration of faith in the sacred ideal.
In his
Gulf War Anniversary address delivered to the Iraqi people on January 17,
2000, Hussein stated that the value attached to what a man loves "ranks on the
same level of the sacrifice he renders" and is "commensurate with that
sacrifice."
The pleasure of "killing one's own
people" thus is equivalent to a willingness to sacrifice one's people, to
allow them to die in the name of the leader and the sacred ideals he
presumably represents. As the war on the eastern front progressed in 1942,
Goebbels was satisfied to note that "The German soldiers go into battle with
devotion, like congregations going into service."
Saddam Hussein said:
We love God as much as we sacrifice for that love
and endeavor to win His satisfaction with us. You have sacrificed, noble
Iraqis, all that is dear and precious, and have shed your blood seeking the
love of God and in hope to win His satisfaction.
P. H.
Pearse, founder of the Irish Revolutionary movement, was thrilled in 1916 to
observe the carnage of the First World War:
The last sixteen months
have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to
the earth. It is good for the world to be warmed with the red wine of the
battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the
homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of
country.
When the ideal for which persons are
willing to die is very far from us--not our own--we see the willingness to
allow young men (and others) to die as cold, ruthless brutality. When it is
our ideal for which dying is proposed, we call it "beautiful
sacrifice."
The status of Gulf War (2?) revolves
around the question of whether Saddam Hussein will succumb to his narcissistic
dream, omnipotent fantasy of sacrificing the Iraqi people. Will he provoke the
American people to act as sacrificers--with his own
people as sacrificial
victims?
Of course, it takes two to tango. The other
question is: Why is the President of the United States trying to provoke the
President of Iraq to sacrifice his own people? Why is the United States
willing to play the role as sacrificer with the Iraqi people as sacrificial
victims?
Richard Koenigsberg, Ph. D.
Director, Library of Social
Science