"A Saddam approach is required for Iraq”

Khadir Taher, a regular writer at Elaph, a pan-Arab website, wrote on March 2 that: “I regret that my pessimistic presentations concerning Iraq are usually right and experiences have proven their correctness. I’m one of the Iraqis distinguished for demanding [that Iraq be put] under American custodianship because it lacks a national, politically honorable choice of parties and because of its failure, during all of Iraq’s contemporary history, to rule itself. Taher continued: “Despite the fact that I was in opposition to the Saddam regime and my positions were often written in the Iraqi opposition press during his era, and that I severely condemn the crimes of the Saddam regime from the arrests, torture, executions and money theft, however, I find myself obliged to accept the facts and recognize the correctness of the Saddam regime's approach represented by firmness, an iron fist, fighting religious parties and the resistance to the Iranian danger.“The philosophy of the government in the Saddam regime was based on the nature of individual relationships in Iraqi society. It applied the method of the ‘shepherd and his sheep’ beginning [with] the relationship inside the family, to the clan, school, college, parties, religious institutions and community…this approach to relationships-the venerable absolutes - produced in the people a submission to authority, admiration of its prestige, and its sanctification ...the Iraqi society was inflicted with masochism; that is pleasure from submission to authority and the demand of more of it. If [masochists] lose this authority then they begin to revolt, rebel and vandalize…this is unintentional behaviors that masochists resort to upon their deprivation of submission to an authority.”Taher continued: “After the fall of the Saddam regime, the Iraqi community lost the authority that it was facing and at the same time feeding its masochistic need of repression. [Repression] for them is like a drug. With the entry of the Iraqi gang parties, [we have all] that they carried from experiences in emigrant countries, from theft, treachery and deceit. Indeed an explosion of administrative corruption, money theft, and sabotage occurred and society entered into the lines of the Iranina-Syrian intelligence and directly contributed to directing and supporting terrorist acts from explosions, to killings to importing drugs into Iraq and the abuse of the main authority. “Today Iraq is swimming in a flood of a civil war disaster. What is asked for is an immediate solution that will save what remains of the country after its complete burning. The nation has tried democracy in its widest applications and it became its biggest danger and proved that the Iraqi society is used to a centralized, firm government and democracy is not suited for it, so what is the solution? The only solution for Iraq’s current situation is for the United States to step forward and cancel the political process, freeze the activities of the parties-except for the Kurdish ones-and to appoint a military Iraqi officer to govern Iraq in an emergency government that America will supervise. The military governor should be strict, return veneration to the country, hit terrorism, militias and agents of Iran and Syria and impose the authority of the law on everyone.” Taher concluded: “I repeat that I severely reject and condemn the crimes of the Saddam regime. But I recognize the view of this regime in its centralized strict goverment...it is too bad that we find ourselves obliged to confess that our enemy regime of the criminal Saddam succeeded in imposing organization, stability and containing the brutality of the society…well Saddam truly understood the nature of the Iraqi society.” - Elaph, United Kingdom