Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Note to Readers
- Dramatis Personae
- Map of Iraq
- Introduction
- One The United States
- Two The “Zionist Entity”
- Three The Arab World
- Four Qadisiyyah Saddam (The Iran-Iraq War)
- Five The Mother of All Battles
- Six Special Munitions
- Seven The Embargo and the Special Commission
- Eight Hussein Kamil
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Timeline
- References
- Index
- References
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Note to Readers
- Dramatis Personae
- Map of Iraq
- Introduction
- One The United States
- Two The “Zionist Entity”
- Three The Arab World
- Four Qadisiyyah Saddam (The Iran-Iraq War)
- Five The Mother of All Battles
- Six Special Munitions
- Seven The Embargo and the Special Commission
- Eight Hussein Kamil
- Epilogue
- Appendix: Timeline
- References
- Index
- References
Summary
Having a whole generation of Iraqi and Americans grow up without understanding each other [can have] negative implications and could lead to mix-ups.
– Saddam Hussein, 1983Why do you think we trusted the Prophets? It is because they recorded every incident.
– Saddam Hussein, circa 1991OVERVIEW
Sir Michael Howard, the great British military historian, once warned that “the past is a foreign country; there is very little we can say about it until we have learned the language and understood its assumptions.” A recurring insight when reviewing transcripts of discussions between Saddam and members of his inner circle is the extent to which the West’s failure to understand this opaque regime were as much a failure of Westerners to understand their own assumptions as they were a deficit of fact. Extrapolating from Howard’s quote, one could say that to Western policy makers, totalitarian regimes may be the most exotic of all foreign countries. The inglorious demise of Saddam Hussein’s totalitarian regime might provide insights to the kind of thinking that emerges from the innermost regions of totalitarianism and a guidebook to improving assumptions of the “other”.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Saddam TapesThe Inner Workings of a Tyrant's Regime, 1978–2001, pp. 1 - 15Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011