The Metaphors Of The Iraq War

e. At first the analogy had the narrow

meaning of pointing out the unprovoked annexation of foreign

territory: just as Hitler had invaded Czechoslovakia,

Saddam had swallowed Kuwait, both transgressions against

internationally recognized borders. Quickly, however, even

during the first Iraq war, the metaphor came to signify the brutality

of the Iraqi regime or, rather, the brutality of the Iraqi

regime in its occupation of Kuwait. During the second Gulf war,

the use of the metaphor became more emphatic: the brutality of

the Iraqi regime to the Iraqi population itself and, especially, to

ethnic minorities (e.g., the Kurds, the treatment of whom displayed

a genocidal character). Moreover, the nature of the international

threat posed by Iraq changed.

Rather than being
viewed as a local bully endangering its neighbors, Iraq came to
be understood as the carrier of weapons of mass destruction,
representing a much graver danger to countries much further
away.

On the one hand, the global threat associated with Iraq

echoes the classical totalitarian aspiration to world domination;

on the other, it is the function of a changed security perception

after September 11.

The question of Iraq is central to the understanding of current

anti-Americanism for two different reasons. As noted, the

Iraq wars are the primary casus belli of the anti-Americans

against the foreign policy of the United States. On a deeper

level, however, the metaphor of Saddam as Hitler can lead us to

a better understanding of what is at stake. For large parts of the

American public, a war against totalitarianism remains just and

worthwhile. For large parts of the public in Europe—the continent

that incubated the two totalitarianisms that dominated

the last century—a preference for appeasement prevails, and this

difference turns into anti-Americanism.

However, the willingness to accommodate reprehensible

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84 ANTI-AMERICANISM IN EUROPE

regimes is not only a European phenomenon, and clearly significant

parts of the American public were opposed to the war. It

is as if the judgment on totalitarianism had somehow softened

since the collapse of Communism: not that one can find

many
defenders of the great dictators of the past but simply that the
condemnation of Nazism and Communism no longer convincingly
provides the orientation for the moral compass of many.
So it is not surprising that George W. Bush’s characterization of
the Ba’ath regime as “evil” could be viewed as simplistic by a
contemporary sensibility reluctant to distinguish between right
and wrong, especially in Europe.

It is not that anyone mounted

much of a positive defense of Saddam Hussein’s regime, but

there was clearly reluctance to challenge it: Would it not be

more comfortable just to ignore brutal regimes? Not everyone

supported a war against Hitler, so it is not surprising to find an

appeasement camp with regard to the metaphoric Hitler.

The Iraq wars posed the question of totalitarianism, both in

terms of the metaphor of Saddam as Hitler and in terms of the

real character of the regime, as will be discussed in this chapter.

However, the wars also revealed the complex relationship of

outsiders, so-called world opinion, to totalitarian regimes:

though some witnesses can muster the resolve to confront evil,

there is always a large appeasement camp with a strong desire

to ignore, minimize, or even accommodate Hitler, Saddam, and

their ilk. Therefore the historical question of totalitarianism is

inextricably related to the contemporary question of moral

judgment. Examining the metaphor of Saddam as Hitler allows

us to reexamine the judgment on totalitarianism and

thereby
explore important inclinations in contemporary political culture.
Germans born after 1945 sometimes asked their parents what
they had done under the Nazi regime. Why had they failed to
resist? History will eventually pose the same question to those
who would have preferred to protect Saddam’s regime from
change.