Tyranny suffers another big loss

[thedrifter]

Article ran : 04/12/2003
Tyranny suffers another big loss
DAILY NEWS STAFF
The end of dictatorial rule in any country is cause for celebration, and Saddam Hussein was a particularly brutal and vicious dictator. We rejoice with what must surely be the vast majority of the people of Iraq that his regime has ended.



Baghdad has fallen, as has Kirkuk, the gateway to the northern Iraqi oilfields. They have now been joined by Mosul, Iraq?s third largest city.



This is not to say that the war is over. Next on the list for coalition forces is Tikrit, Saddam?s hometown. There are still scattered pockets of resistance and the possibility of terrorist-type activities. More guerrilla activity along supply lines is possible. And it just might be that Saddam is still alive and able to organize one last, vicious, rat-in-the-corner mobilization.



But alive or dead, Saddam has not been heard from for days. ?Baghdad Bob,? the Iraqi information minister who seemed to have been angling for a show on Comedy Central, is nowhere to be found. The mechanisms of command and control seem to have melted; if anyone is pulling levers in central command, they are no longer connected to people in the field.



The regime that ruled so cruelly and apparently so completely for so long has collapsed like a house of cards. No matter how often it happens, we are always surprised at this phenomenon. Yet instability and vulnerability are built into totalitarian systems, almost as if they were part of their DNA.



It is not a coincidence that totalitarian rulers eventually become pathetic paranoids, confined to bunkers and surrounded by quivering yes-men. In his novel ?First Circle,? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn drew a similar portrait of Stalin toward the end of his days ? still cruel and still able to lash out, but confined to an apartment in the Kremlin, unable to trust a single soul.



Total power exacts a terrible price from those who wield it ? though the cost to those they tyrannize, of course, is much higher. Can it be that the ring of power cannot be used for good?



In a piece in the London Daily Telegraph, Britain?s most distinguished military historian, John Keegan, marveled that ?Saddam?s war plan, if he had one, must be reckoned one of the most inept ever designed.? Keegan says an even modestly competent defense would have ?been to group his best forces in the south, to oppose the Anglo-Americans as far from the capital as possible, and then to conduct a fighting withdrawal up the valleys of the great rivers.?



Saddam?s defense was simply inept. But should we be surprised that an insulated, insular regime gets out of touch and vulnerable?



If the history of the last century should have taught us anything, it is the apparent paradox that tyranny is unstable and free societies are resilient.



Let us never forget.



Sempers,

Roger