When the Throne is A Chair

"Naive minds think that the office of kingship lodges in the king himself, in his ermine cloak and his crown, in his flesh and bones. As a matter of fact, the office of kingship is an interrelation between people. The king is king only because the interests and prejudices of millions of people are refracted through his person. When the flood of development sweeps away these interrelations, then the king appears to be only a washed-out man with a flabby lower lip. He who was once called Alfonso XIII could discourse upon this from fresh impressions."

So wrote Leon Trotsky about the Spanish king displaced by the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic. And one Saddam Hussein, now languishing in an Iraqi jail awaiting execution, might add some further insight.

Although this ‘November surprise’ did the Bush administration little good at the polls, it should not pass without comment. In fact, it is interesting because at this point, it seems to underline the jaded attitude widely held toward the Iraq invasion, both here and in Iraq. For Iraq, what might once have been a landmark in the construction of a new political order was insignificant when determined by forces outside the control of their control. The old man condemned to death by the court was simply that, an old man. His death no longer has the symbolic value it would have done had the Iraqis themselves overthrown an oppressive political order.

Compare the last week to the 1958 Iraqi Revolution that overthrew the British-backed monarchy. In his monumental history of Iraq 'The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq', Hanna Batatu records that, within minutes of the military coup that summarily dispatched the royal family (gunned down as they were marched out of the palace):

"...the capital overflowed with people...many of them in a fighting mood and united by a single passion: "Death to the traitors and agents of imperialism!" It was like a tide coming in and at first engulfed and with a vengeance Nuri's house and the royal palace, but soon extended to the British consulate and embassy and other palaces...When in the end, after nightfall, the crowds ebbed back, the statue of Faisal, the symbol of the monarchy, lay shattered..."

[Nuri As Sa'id, the sycophantic Prime Minister, was a particularly hated figure of the Hashemite regime. After his execution his body was disinterred, dragged through the streets, and then burned].

By comparison celebrations of this latest announcement were muted, partly due to a US curfew (no doubt a similar tidal wave was feared). But what would be the common cry of Iraqis today? And what would the hated symbols and figures of contemporary Iraq be? Flailing in a political quagmire of somebody else’s making, Iraqis can no longer unite over a vision of the future. Thus Saddam’s execution can only invoke an ambiguous response.

Reaction in the US is also complicated. In some circles the Hussein trial has been dismissed as a show trial, designed to vindicate the US invasion by exposing the worst crimes of the Saddam regime (ideally, while avoiding any discussion of US involvement in those crimes). There is no doubt some truth to this. But this was also a ‘showcase’ trial, whereby Americans, and perhaps more importantly, a skeptical international audience, would get to see the establishment of rule of law in Iraq. It was an attempt to present the occupation as an apolitical, ethical intervention, adhering to the norms of 1990s humanitarianism. These audiences would also observe that American power had not brought about a revolutionary moment with the violence and instability such an idea entails, but a smooth transition, replete with a therapeutic process for coming to terms with the past.

This has failed. Even groups who routinely push for the trial of international criminals, such as Human Rights Watch, have criticized the proceedings and questioned the outcome. In some ways, the trial has fallen between the cracks. For Iraqis the moment is not authentically political; they have never been agents in the downfall of Saddam and so, however much they dislike their former ruler, they are alienated from this process. Meanwhile for external observers, the trial can only seem illegitimate and designed to serve the purposes of the US, or the factional politics of Iraq. Once more the US founders in its Iraq project, unable to escape the distorting influence of its own power.