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February 14, 2006
Gilgamesh and Tears of a Tyrant
I finished Stephen Mitchell's Translation of Gilgamesh in about an hour. I mainly read it because it had been on my "to read" list for a while and I had wanted to read it all the way through since college. I had a professor who talked a lot about it one of my biblical studies courses and although I knew the basic story, I had never sat down and read it. It is a good story, but no where near as interesting to me as most other ancient literature I have read.
I am currently reading Killing Pablo by Mark Bowden, Do As I Say (Not As I Do) by Paul Schweizer, and hope to soon start Saddam's Secrets by Gorges Sada, one of Saddam's former generals. I am currently listening to the Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin and when I am done with that will take of the third section of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Speaking of Saddam, Mesopotamia, and Mark Bowden, Bowden wrote an excellent biography of Hussein for the Atlantic Monthly a few years ago called Tears of the Tyrant. It is behind a subscription wall, but it is reposted here. For some reason there have been few biographies of Hussein (or else I have somehow missed them all) and most news reports I have seen either ignore or gloss over his actions before the invasion of Kuwait. Parts of Tears of the Tyrant read like Animal Farm and the following section is the one I found most disturbing, shows how dictators maintain control, and is where the title of the piece came from:
On July 18, 1979, he invited all the members of the Revolutionary Command Council and hundreds of other party leaders to a conference hall in Baghdad. He had a video camera running in the back of the hall to record the event for posterity. Wearing his military uniform, he walked slowly to the lectern and stood behind two microphones, gesturing with a big cigar. His body and broad face seemed weighted down with sadness. There had been a betrayal, he said. A Syrian plot. There were traitors among them. Then Saddam took a seat, and Muhyi Abd al-Hussein Mashhadi, the secretary-general of the Command Council, appeared from behind a curtain to confess his own involvement in the putsch. He had been secretly arrested and tortured days before; now he spilled out dates, times, and places where the plotters had met. Then he started naming names. As he fingered members of the audience one by one, armed guards grabbed the accused and escorted them from the hall. When one man shouted that he was innocent, Saddam shouted back, "Itla! Itla!" "Get out! Get out!" (Weeks later, after secret trials, Saddam had the mouths of the accused taped shut so that they could utter no troublesome last words before their firing squads.) When all of the sixty "traitors" had been removed, Saddam again took the podium and wiped tears from his eyes as he repeated the names of those who had betrayed him. Some in the audience, too, were crying perhaps out of fear. This chilling performance had the desired effect. Everyone in the hall now understood exactly how things would work in Iraq from that day forward. The audience rose and began clapping, first in small groups and finally as one. The session ended with cheers and laughter. The remaining leaders about 300 in all left the hall shaken, grateful to have avoided the fate of their colleagues, and certain that one man now controlled the destiny of their entire nation. Videotapes of the purge were circulated throughout the country.
Other future books I will be reading include Life of Sile Doty, 1800-1876, the most noted thief and daring burglar of his time a forgotten autobiography and The Spanish Civil War by Antony Beevor. I read excerpts from Life of Sile Doty in one of my history classes in college and have wanted to read it ever since. The trick of Doty that I remember from college was waiting for a circus to come to town and while everyone was at the circus he would rob the houses. This gave him an opportunity to rob people and the circus people would get blamed for it. I have never read anything in depth on the Spanish Civil War, although I have read many things that refer to it, and I heard good things about Beevor's book.
Posted by Pete at February 14, 2006 05:34 PM
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