Now what?

Okay, "we got him." So what happens now?

I admit I'm less excited about the capture of Saddam Hussein than many others are (or claim to be). That doesn't mean it's not a good thing: All tyrants should have to take their turn in the dock - although it is hard to think of a sentence that could be pronounced on Saddam that would measure up to the crimes he committed. No, it's because I'm more interested in practical results than symbolism, which is what this really is. That is, I don't believe it will really change things on the ground in Iraq, either politically or in terms of security, except perhaps in the short run.

That said, however, as symbolism the capture of Saddam Hussein is indeed powerful, both for Iraqis and the White House. For example, the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), in an email to supporters, says

You cannot underestimate what this news means to Iraqis. [I assume they meant "overestimate," that is, no matter how much you might think it means, it means more.] From the genocidal "Anfal" campaign against Iraqi Kurds to the mass killings that followed the failed 1991 uprising, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis died under his reign.

They also quote

an aid worker, Manal Omar of Women for Women International. Based in Baghdad, she was attending a womens conference in Amman, Jordan when the news of Saddam's capture broke:

"I had the honor of being among the Iraqi women - who I now see as my sisters - when they first heard of Saddam's capture. Thirty of the leaders were gathered at a conference here in Amman, and almost all broke into tears and sobs that the man who had managed to reach into each individuals personal life and rip it apart by killing their husbands, sons, and fathers - raping and maiming their women - was brought to justice. Moreover, the man who brought one of the Arab world's greatest countries to its knees through a dictatorship of fear and selling his own people for political gain now found himself at the bottom."

On the PR side, there is already punditizing to the effect that this makes 2004 a slam dunk for Bush and how the Democrats have "lost an issue."

"The Democrats can't touch him at the moment," said Columbia University historian Henry Graff. "He said he was going to get him. He got him. What more do you want? Now if we can lower the level of violence over there, he's going to look good."

It's as if we're all now supposed to think that the real issue in Iraq is not the lies, the deceit, the deaths, the destruction, the profiteering, the jingoism of "preemptive war," the deepening $166 billion (so far) quagmire, no, nothing matters other than whether or not Saddam got bagged. (Sidebar: Since the Democrats were going after Bush the very next day, Mr. Graff has earned his rightful place at the table as a punditizer.)

In Iraq, Saddam was subjected to the ritual humiliation designed to deny him any remaining status as a symbol himself. He was shown submitting meekly to a physical exam, still bearded. (Have you noticed, by the way, how the picture of him that keeps appearing in the media is the "wild man" one taken before he had a haircut and a shave, not the more recognizable one taken after?) He was variously described as weary, disheveled, "resembled a desperate fugitive," "caught like a rat," "bewildered," "very disoriented," bedraggled, "like a homeless man at the bus station." Famed chickenhawk Donald Rumsfeld mocked him, saying "he was cowering in a hole in the ground, and had a pistol and didn't use it and certainly did not put up any fight at all. In the last analysis, he seemed not terribly brave."

Meanwhile, members of the Iraqi Governing Council, supposedly there to help identify Saddam, were instead allowed to meet and challenge him in the classic scenario of the oppressed confronting their now-beaten oppressor. That may not have gone as well as hoped, since he remained "defiant," but "his opponents seemed to gain some legitimacy as leaders through the meeting," which was likely the real point anyway.

Still, whatever value the capture has as symbolism, a more important consideration is, again, what practical difference it will make. I'm convinced the answer is "a little - maybe."

For one thing, it's pretty clear that Saddam Hussein was not in charge of anything. Even General Raymond Odierno, who lead the operation that nailed him, was quoted as saying the lack of communications equipment in the hide-out indicated Saddam was not commanding the resistance.

(He may, however, have been in touch with some cells. Time reported that

operatives found a briefcase with Saddam that contained a letter from a Baghdad resistance leader. Contained in the message, the official said, were the minutes from a meeting of a number of resistance leaders who came together in the capital. The official said the names found on this piece of paper will be valuable and could lead to the capture of insurgency leaders around the Sunni Triangle.

Just as a sidebar and assuming the letter is real, what level of stupidity did it take for someone to commit those leaders' real names to a piece of paper?)

For another, there's no real reason to think that most of the insurgency is driven by loyalty to Saddam or the old regime. While it's undeniably true that some Iraqis wished for his return, it's equally undeniable that the vast majority despised him and with more than good cause. As a result,

[t]he capture of Saddam Hussein is not expected to halt the Sunni insurgency against the United States.

U.S. officials said the insurgency remains flushed with tens of millions of dollars in funds handled by senior Saddam aides. They said Saddam was not found to have directed the attacks against U.S. and coalition forces in the Sunni Triangle.

And that's even assuming that the insurgency is wholly driven by Sunni opposition. The same item notes that

[o]fficials expect Al Qaida operatives and the thousands of foreign volunteers recruited to play a bigger role in the anti-coalition campaign in Iraq. Al Qaida-aligned cells were said to have been responsible for most of the large-scale suicide car bombings in Baghdad in October and November.

Other assessments echoed that view, as experts on terrorism and insurgencies said that

the effect of Mr. Hussein's capture was still unclear, and that much support for guerrillas could be related to dissatisfaction with the economic situation.

So little is known about the guerrillas, they added, that officials do not know how many are waging war out of loyalty to Mr. Hussein and how many are fighting for other causes.

"We shouldn't think this gives answer to the fundamental problems that have inspired the insurgency," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism analyst at the RAND Corporation. "They must follow up on this tremendous military and intelligence success to make fundamental changes that affect the daily lives of Iraqis."

And those kinds of changes are the ones least likely to occur. There seems to be very little desire or incentive in the White House to let go of authority in Iraq in any but the most limited way. "Democracy," did you say?

[T]he administration is balking at popular elections. ...

To transfer power, L. Paul Bremer, the administrator of the U.S.-led authority that governs Iraq, has instead devised an indirect system to choose a new Iraqi government through 18 regional caucuses. It's so complicated, however, that even some U.S. officials refer to cheat sheets to explain the different phases....

As now envisioned, the process orchestrated by Bremer is also weighted in favor of former exiles and the aging opposition leaders who were handpicked by the United States to be members of the Iraqi Governing Council and who have been unable to provide inspiring or popular leadership. Many Iraqis have said they are suspicious of the outcome of the political transition before it has even begun.

There is even less give on the economic side, with the USA and that hand-picked "government" firmly in control of everything from oil revenues to giving out reconstruction contracts to distributing food aid. The future of Iraq looks less and less like the beacon of freedom we were promised and more and more like Afghanistan, still beset with violence, poverty, an uncompleted government, and ethnic rivalries. (Maybe that's why Bush was against "nation building" - he knew that he'd be lousy at it.)

Almost lost in all this is the question of what to do with the man himself. Rumsfeld said we've not yet decided whether to consider him a prisoner of war. For the moment, the US is questioning him and pretty much says we'll give him up when we're damned good and ready. (I wonder if there's going to be another legal fiction created here, ala Guantanamo, ala Jose Padilla and Yasser Esam Hamdi. Saddam, the deposed head of state of a nation we invaded, must be considered as having at least the protections of a POW - which we then get around by saying we haven't "classified" him yet, so we can hold/interrogate him indefinitely.) However,

Adnan Pachachi, a leading member of the Iraqi Governing Council, said Saddam would be tried for his crimes against Iraqis, and would be tried by Iraqis. "There will be a public hearing," Pachachi said, "a trial that is open."

Talk like that must send icy shivers through the entire White House. The last thing they'd want would be a full, open trial of Saddam Hussein, which could not be prevented from opening up the history of US support for his regime all through the '80s, right up to the invasion of Kuwait. Look for the "questioning" of Saddam to be extended for some time and any trial put off until, say, 2005.

Footnote: There is one last thing about this, one rather odd but not beyond all reason. When I first heard the story, I joked that I wondered if it was really Saddam or one of his look-alikes left there specifically to be found. One of the things that struck me were reports that Saddam was almost constantly on the move, not staying in any one place for more than a few hours. To be useful, then, information as to his location would have to be more than hot, it'd have to be on fire. Even an hour or two of an arrestee refusing to answer questions, coupled with the time it would take to assemble a force to get to the named place, could easily result in Saddam's no longer being there. It was also clear that someone had assisted him in hiding: There was no way he could place the styrofoam plug over the hole then cover it with rocks, dirt, and a carpet from inside the hole. I passed it off as an amusing speculation.

However, in an interesting twist on that same speculation, the folks at DEBKAfile, a conservative policy-analysis group based in Jerusalem which claims contacts in the Israeli military and intelligence, conclude that Saddam was not hiding, he was a prisoner, held in hopes of collecting the $25 million reward offered by the US. They note that in some reports, Saddam was not just in a hole, he was bricked in. As Time had it,

[t]he raid on the farm in al-Dawr, a village 15 miles from his hometown of Tikrit, initially came up empty, the official said. There was no Saddam Hussein in sight. Then one man on the property, apparently realizing the game was up, pointed out a bricked-in wall inside the basement of a small house on the property. Saddam is in there, he told the special forces operators from Task Force 121, who took down the farm with the aid of soldiers from the 1st Brigade of the Fourth Infantry Division. Saddam was bricked into his hiding place, he added. "They couldn't get him out at first and had to dig, from either side of the hole," said the official. The soldiers finally made a large enough passageway to drag him out.

In such a case, they note, Saddam could not have gotten out unless someone helped him out. That, combined with his appearance and a few other factors, suggests to them captivity rather than sanctuary. That would also explain his lack of resistance when found: Right at that moment, the Americans might well appear more as rescuers than pursuers.

Of course, there are some obvious difficulties in this, not the least of which is the gun he had with him. (The AK-47s, the money, and the briefcase were in the hut, not with Saddam.) But let's go with the flow for a moment: The gun didn't get fired. Did anyone actually examine it? No report said it was loaded - or loaded with more than the classic single bullet. (In fact, I don't remember any reference to ammunition, even though it's common to mention an amount seized along with firearms. Just not mentioned? Or just not there?) What about the clean, unwrapped clothing in the hut? Okay, but doesn't that run counter to the "homeless man in the bus station" look? Who said the clothes were for him, anyway? Were the two men caught running from the hut his bodyguards? Or his guards?

If this is by some some wild chance true, how might such a thing have come about? Now, I'm not going to entertain any fantasies that the US caught him some time ago but kept him under wraps until what seemed a good moment for Bush. (Especially because it fails on its own merits; later would be more propitious, I expect.) Sure, the reward is a possibility. But what else? A power struggle within whatever part of the resistance Saddam was connected to? Some underlings deciding a physically and emotionally weakened Saddam was becoming too much of a burden and this seemed a good way to take some of the heat off?

Was he, in fact, left there to be found?

Like I said, rather odd but not beyond all reason.