Jul-Aug 2003:
Pacifism and the Congo Dilemma
Building Antimilitarism
Toppling Saddam’s Statue
It Started with‘Lysistrata’
Youthpeace in Connecticut
Activist News
WRL News
Activist Reviews

Homepages:
War Resisters League
The Nonviolent Activist

They All Fall Down
Toppling Vladimir Josef Felix Nicolae Honecker Hussein

By Janis Kent Cakars

oses supposes his toeses are roses, but Moses supposes erroneously. Just because you suppose it—just because you say it, even, it isn’t necessarily true. When Saddam Hussein’s tallest statue was toppled, the mass media got it all wrong. In the mainstream press, many observers managed to confuse nonviolence with war.

Almost as soon as U.S. troops entered central Baghdad April 9 and found a couple of hundred Iraqis beating up on a massive statue of Saddam Hussein, comparisons to the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union began to fly. Katie Couric did it, Christiane Amanpour did it, Peter Jennings did it, Forest Sawyer did it and, of course, Donald Rumsfeld did it.

A torrent of stories appeared drawing the link between regime change in Eastern Europe and regime change in Iraq, from Los Angeles’ Times to New York’s and from Fox news to NBC: It was like Lenin. It was like Stalin. It was like Dzerzhinsky. It was like Ceausescu. It was like the Berlin Wall. Actually, it was not like the fall of Communism at all, and those comparisons did little to explain to the U.S. public what was happening in Baghdad. Rather, such statements amounted to misleading cheerleading.

Saddam’s statue comes tumbling down in Baghdad before a sparse crowd.

Tyrants and their statues are not all the same and neither are the ways in which they fall. What happened in the Soviet bloc and what happened in Iraq were very different. For starters, the toppling of the statue in central Baghdad came with the crescendo of war. The end of Communism in Europe came as a result of peaceful revolutions—called “velvet” in Czechoslovakia and “singing” in the Baltic states, for instance.

True, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were shot in Romania, but the dictator and his wife were shot by their own people. That is a crucial distinction between what happened in the late 1980s and what happened in April. The movements that overthrew Communism were homegrown and nonviolent. No invader came into Berlin, Prague, Bucharest, Moscow or Tallinn and tore down the statues of the old regime. It was U.S. forces who brought down the symbol of the Baath dictatorship. In the process a U.S. soldier smothered Saddam’s likeness with the stars and stripes as if to boast, “In your face!” before pulling out an Iraqi flag almost as an afterthought. This time regime change was a matter of U.S. military might. In Europe it was the result of local determination, nonviolent action and an ardent desire for democracy and an end to Communism.

Reporting from the scene, Katie Couric on “Dateline NBC” exclaimed, “If this isn’t symbolism, I don’t know what is. It’s almost like the fall of the Berlin Wall … Tom [Brokaw], just as you witnessed at the Berlin Wall with everybody grabbing a chunk.” On CNN’s “Breaking News,” Christiane Amanpour echoed the sentiment: “It reminds me of another time … watching the fall of Communism and you watched the Berlin Wall chip by chip coming down and then all of the statues of the Communist leaders, you know, country by country.”

But Baghdad was not like Berlin. In Iraq there was no Soviet-backed Communism, no divided country and no wall. There were not thousands of people cheering newfound freedom. Photos featured in U.S. media closed in on a feverishly happy crowd, but the long view showed a mostly empty square. In fact, some of the protesters in Baghdad may have been provided by the U.S. military. When the Berlin Wall was breached, East Berliners went on a shopping spree (they were given 100 marks each to revel in the West). In Baghdad, they went on a looting spree. In Germany, regime change was preceded by the rapid disintegration of the Communist Party on the heels of massive protests. Secretary General Erich Honecker of the German Democratic Republic was ousted after 18 years of rule. He was replaced by Egon Krenz, who announced the resignation of the entire GDR Politburo about a month later. This was followed by elections and unification with West Germany by the following year’s end. In Iraq, it was the destruction of the party by the armed forces of a foreign power. There were no mass demonstrations, so far no elections and no peaceful transfer of power.

On CNBC, Forrest Sawyer prompted his viewers the day before the big one was hauled down by a U.S. tank, “Perhaps you are reminded of the fall of Communism in 1991, all of the statues of Lenin … that were pulled down. This time, it is Saddam’s turn.” Although Lenin statues still stand, mostly in provincial Russian cities (and the Bolshevik leader still lies in state in Red Square), most did fall in the last years of the Soviet empire. Who could forget the scenes of the cab-hailing leader hitting the ground in Vilnius, Riga, and even Moscow? But Lenin was not Saddam, not even close.

Lenin was the father of an empire that stretched across 11 time zones and held influence over much of the world. He was the symbol of a regime that actually possessed a vast nuclear arsenal that threatened not only the United States, but Earth. But Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction still have not been found.

The United States, which for 70 years (with the exception of a brief alliance in World War II) was locked in competition with the Soviet Union, was a one-time patron of Saddam. Since that relationship soured, Iraq has been devastated twice by U.S.-led war and has suffered more than a decade of sanctions. The supposed threat to the United States in April proved illusory.

The comparisons to Stalin are even more absurd. Those statues were taken down without regime change before the fall of Communism by the Soviets themselves following Kruschchev’s secret speech in 1956. Digging through the list of toppled Communist statues, Peter Jennings on ABC News noted, “It reminds others of the downing of the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky … in Moscow.” Beyond the dubious connection to the head of the Soviet secret police, the comment reminds others of the recent debates over re-erecting the Dzerzhinsky statue. In short, the comparisons between the statue crashing in Baghdad and Eastern Europe are more than misleading. They are threadbare and ahistorical. They do nothing to illuminate what happened in Iraq on April 9, 2003.

But it is more than a matter of apples and oranges. The widespread use of the analogy shows just how much the mass media are in lockstep with the government’s view. After watching the mighty statue tumble in central Baghdad, Donald Rumsfeld pronounced, “Saddam Hussein is now taking his rightful place alongside Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, and Ceausescu in the pantheon of failed brutal dictators.” Of course, Stalin and Lenin did not fail, but died in office. The brutality of the five may not be questioned, but their comparability should be. The purpose of such comparisons is simply to bolster an unfounded rationale for war. Why is the press participating in such cheerleading, instead of inquiring into the validity of such statements and explaining events in Iraq accurately?

Janis Kent Cakars last contributed to the Nonviolent Activist with “Lessons from Latvia” (March-April 2002). In that article, the number of casualties in Vilnius, Lithuania, in January 1991 was multiplied tenfold due to a typographical error. The author regrets this mistake, but is pleased to announce that since the publication of that article, Latvia has passed an alternative service law.