Grim celebrations on Saddam's fall

By Libby Spencer

So how did you celebrate the fourth anniversary of the toppling of Saddam's statute? Me, I didn't really mark the occassion and neither did the White House, who prefered to showcase the state visit of Clifford the Big Red Dog. In Iraq, several thousand demonstrated in the streets burning US flags and chanting "Death to America."

But via Buzzflash, perhaps the saddest commemoration comes from the man who took the sledge hammer to Saddam's statute on that day. Leaving aside the dispute over the staged enthusiasm and size of the alleged crowd, there's no denying Khadim al-Jubouri was the man who did it. He has the magazine covers to prove it. However, four years later he doesn't feel much like celebrating.

"It achieved nothing," he said after putting away the magazines.

Four years later, with violence besieging the country, al-Jubouri cares most about security and order, and he has seen little of either. He blames Iraq's Shiite-led government and its security forces, and he wishes for a return of the era led by the man whose statue he helped tear down.

"We got rid of a tyrant and tyranny. But we were surprised that after one thief had left, another 40 replaced him," said al-Jubouri, who is a Shiite. "Now we regret that Saddam Hussein is gone, no matter how much we hated him."

Sure, now he can buy the Harley Davidson motorcycles he so loves, but since his income is only a quarter of what it was pre-invasion, he can't afford gas to run them. He now has a cell phone which he couldn't get under Saddam's rule, but seven of his relatives and friends are no longer alive to answer his calls.

He called the new Baghdad security plan "a failure from the beginning." Although he has noticed that Shiite militias have faded from neighborhoods, suicide bombings haven't stopped. Every time he hears an explosion, he worries that his friends and relatives are among the victims.

Under Hussein, he never faced day-to-day corruption, al-Jubouri said, but now he must pay bribes just to get a license or file a police complaint.

"I feel lost now," he said.

Khadim feels lost. The war feels lost. Indeed the prospect for any lasting Middle East peace feels almost irretrievably out of reach. Me, I'm just waiting for someone to find a definitive definition of victory so we can declare it and get the hell out of Baghdad.

(Cross-posted at The Impolitic.)