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[Previous entry: "Well, poo."] [Main Index] [Next entry: "Further consideration re Salam"] 23 May 2003: "David Warren on Salam"
You'll recall that I was rather happy when Salam Pax resurfaced. Consequently, I was less than enthusiatic when I became aware (via, among others, Jeff Jarvis) of the attempted character assassination, hamfistedly conducted by David Warren of the Ottawa Citizen.
I want to be clear: I'm not saying whether Warren was right or whether Warren was wrong, I'm only saying that we don't know enough of the facts or the circumstances yet to judge.That's altogether too charitable, in my opinion. If Warren were to have speculated about Salam's background and motivations and presented it as a theory, that would have been one thing; but Warren presents his conjectures as if they were fact, and that is why he is being dishonest and defamatory. An example of conjecture masquerading as fact: He [Salam] was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the OPEC headquarters; his father was therefore an oilman, and possibly a former head of Iraq's OPEC mission.Vienna also houses UNOV (the United Nations tertiary headquarters), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, to name a few obvious alternatives. While it is a distinct possibility that Salam's father worked at OPEC, it is not a given, as Warren rather shoddily asserts. You might as well say "He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the capital of Austria; his father was therefore an Austrian, possibly a Habsburg," or "He was brought up at least partly in Vienna, which is the headquarters of the United Nations Postal Authority; his father was therefore a stamp collector, and possibly owned the entire series of UN postage stamps." You get the idea. His English is superb and colloquial. He has those Tariq Aziz qualities. There are nightmares in his background, but the foreground is smooth, charming, self-confident, man of the world -- tending involuntarily to smugness. He can tell you anything, and seems to enjoy putting on the show.And this is supposed to indicate what, exactly? Aside from the "Tariq Aziz qualities"—whatever those are—that description could be applied to me. Are there Ba'ath party members in Salam's family? From what I'm reading in Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear, I fail to see how there can not be. In any one-party state, it's made difficult, even impossible, to get ahead without some form of affiliation to the ruling party, and the Ba'ath party worked exceptionally hard to make itself almost indistinguishable from the Iraqi state apparatus. In his entry of 23-Apr, Salam notes his "uncle M." is the executive director of a bank; this is likely not a job one could hold without party membership after more than three decades of Ba'ath party rule. But consider this: in Orwell's novel 1984, Winston Smith is a party member. Mikhail Gorbachev was a party member in such good standing that he became president, and then proceeded to undermine the rule of very party through whose ranks he had risen to power. Of course, this would not be titillating enough, so Warren throws in the suggestion that Salam may have been employed by any of the plethora of secret police agencies sported by the Iraqi régime. He attempts to distance himself from this slur with a half-hearted disclaimer—"we cannot know yet"—a caution he then proceeds to blithely disregard by commenting that Salam would never have known any "ordinary" Iraqis, unless he was interrogating one privately.Insinuating Salam might be an informer wasn't enough, evidently; casting him as a torturer is much more interesting. Such class, such objective journalism. The backbone of Warren's cheap insinuations is Salam's negative comments about the various opposition groups which have swooped down on Baghdad and eagerly installed themselves in some choice bits of real estate; Warren points out that the accomodations were assigned by the US military, but overlooks the possibility that nobody bothered to tell the population of Baghdad. Curiously, Warren describes two of the locations—the Mansour Social Club and the Iraqi Hunting Club—as private property, whereas Salam's irritation stems in no small part from the fact that he regards them as public property (whether he's correct in that, I have no clue; I just find the contrast noteworthy). Even more curiously, in describing these clubs as "Baathist social preserves (clubs in which Salam would likely have had memberships)," Warren overlooks the fact Salam explicitly mentions that he does indeed hold membership in one of them and expresses his annoyance at being denied access to the large indoor swimming pool. But was the Iraqi Hunting Club all that exclusive? According to this WaPo article from 10-May-2003, Some Iraqis complain about having paid their $25 yearly club dues only to be denied entry by young [INC] gunslingers who man the gates. (Brooke says members will be reimbursed.)I find it remarkable that these members are willing to complain; you'd think that if they were high-ranking Ba'ath party members, they'd be a bit more circumspect and cut their losses (what's 25 bucks to a senior party member, after all?). The same article also notes that the INC leased the place (which puts the lie to Warren's "assigned by the U.S. military" claim), though not from whom, that the INC's budget is paid for by the US taxpayer, and that before the war started the place was slated for demolition to make way for a mosque. I find it remarkable that Salam did apparently not know this last item; perhaps he wasn't quite as close to the party élite as Warren makes out. Back to the opposition groups: [Salam] does know that Ahmed Chalabi and Kanan Makiya, the politicians coming down from free Kurdish territory, and the other exiles returning to Iraq, are the class that are trying to replace his class. They were the people who were fighting the good fight against Mr. Saddam abroad, and committed their lives irretrievably to a democratic future for the country -- when people such as Salam were making their profitable accommodations with the regime.The State Department and the CIA have expressed serious reservations about Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1958 at the age of 13 and was convicted in absentia for bank fraud in Jordan; Chalabi claims the charge was trumped-up. Be that as it may, the organisation he's ostensibly in charge of is the Iraqi National Congress, whom General Anthony Zinni, the previous head of Central Command, described in this speech as "some silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in London." Then there's the Kurdistan Democratic Party, whose idea of "fighting the good fight" was skimming a percentage off the top from the smuggling between Iraq and Turkey, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, whose "good fight" was against the KDP for a cut of the money, until the KDP called in Saddam's help to beat them off. The only time these guys displayed interest in a "democratic future" was when they thought they could wangle something off the Americans (I commented on this in February). In short, being sceptical of these groups' ability to run Iraq in any adequate fashion is hardly a sign of being a hardcore Ba'athi; in actually furthering the toppling of Saddam, the lot of them have been about as useful as tits on a bull. The KDP organised exactly two public works in the last twelve years; the construction of a football stadium, and the repaving of the road used for smuggling goods to and from Turkey. All the health and education projects, public works, demining operations, etc. which happened in Iraqi Kurdistan were organised by the UN with funding from the oil-for-food programme. And yet, I find it all too easy to imagine that the members of these various groups are currently swaggering around Baghdad behaving like they won the war single-handedly, as opposed to showing up after several Coalition divisions had done the job for them, and I find it equally easy to imagine that most inhabitants of Baghdad resent them for their pretensions. Salam refers to the Americans slickly as the "puppet-masters."The quote is out of context; Salam states that he'd rather listen to what the Americans say than to what Mohammed Mohsen al-Zubaidi of the INC has to say, since it is more informative to watch the puppet master than the puppet. In the context of the relationship between the (US government-funded) INC and the US, this characterisation is hardly unreasonable. Salam describes with some relish how the Iraqi Communist Party has appropriated the central Mukhabarat building in Harthiya; Warren describes him as "sympathetic" regarding this development. Gosh, our Salam, not only a Ba'athi torturer, but a commie sympathiser to boot! Who'd have thought it? Especially since the Ba'ath party did everything in its power to root out the ICP, which it regarded as its most dangerous rival; Ba'ath party affiliation and communist sympathies are mutually exclusive in Iraq. Warren may invoke the name of Kanan Makiya, but it is obvious that he has not read Makiya's work, or he would know this. Indeed, he might have gathered this from Salam, who notes that In a twisted macabre upside-down way this is the center of the Iraqi commies, these buildings have been filled with Iraqi communist party members who were imprisoned, tortured and killed there.Salam's relish is caused by the bittersweet irony of the situation; any sympathy he has is for victims of the severest brutality of the Ba'athist régime. But wait, what of Salam's criticism of "de-Ba'athification"? One of his constantly repeated warnings is that the U.S. occupiers are fools if they do not take all those talented former-Baathist officials in from the cold, and put them back in business; that "al-Chalabi's de-Baathification plans don't solve any problems."Warren misrepresents Salam's critique (though that should, by now, be no surprise); Chalabi's notion is apparently that the entire state apparatus of Iraq, as well as its industry, needs to be purged of anyone who ever had anything to do with the Ba'ath party, and Salam points out that this is unrealistic. History proves his point. The "denazification" of Germany was never total; there were simply too many civil servants who had been party members, and if they had all been removed, who would have made sure the garbage was collected, the sewers maintained, etc.? Similarly, it would be impossible to purge the public and industrial sectors of the former Soviet Union of people who ever held a CPSU membership card. Hell, Putin's the ex-chairman of the KGB; how could he have acquired that job without being a communist party member? Salam's criticism of Chalabi's "de-Ba'athification" plan is based on the fact that the plan is unworkable, and also open to injustices; in this regard, Salam cites the example of Sa’ad al-Bazaz, who used to be the editor of a Ba'athist newspaper (and a Ba'ath party member), and used this position to gain the opportunity to flee Iraq. Should he be denied an influential role in Iraqi business because he was once a Ba'ath party member, regardless of his flight? Salam's point is clear. I don't know what motivated David Warren to write this piece. My best guess is that he wants to be "the man who exposed Salam Pax" and he's getting his cheap shots in early so that, should any ugly details about Salam ever come to light, he can cry "See? I told you!" The beauty of the scheme is that he's quite safe himself. I mean, what sort of claim to fame is it for anyone that they exposed some third-string Canadian hack as a dishonest slanderer? |
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