REVOLUTION IN THOUGHT AND THOUGHT IN REVOLUTION

By Amir Eskander
Translated by Hassan Selim

Chapter 1

A. SADDAM HUSSEIN AND THE DIALECTIC OF THE PAST AND THE FUTURE

The lesser struggle is over and the greater struggle has begun!

Power is not the ultimate goal of the revolutionary. It is the beginning, or rather, a new beginning in a different struggle that is both hard and bitter and is the struggle to implement the Revolution's aims, programmes and ideals.

Iraq appeared on the morning of the 30th July to be an awesome mountain of problems and difficulties that were both practical and theoretical. It is true that the Arab Baath Socialist Party, which now holds power, has its own solutions to put forward but no matter how deep the thought behind them may be, the Party cannot move on its own. It is unable to bring about a transformation, which would be vibrant with life and rich in accomplishments without intelligent political leadership and the scorching heat that emanates from the hearts of the masses. Without these, its solutions can never be more than fanciful dreams, permanently devoid of social reality in all times and places.

Saddam Hussein is aware of this at the deepest possible level. He knows that all his skills, abilities and gifts are not confined to passive resistance or clandestine reorganization. He knows that they are also of use--and possibly at their most useful-in the open, under the ever-shining sun of Iraq, in the continuing debate with the masses, in the harsh struggle between dream and reality, and in reconstruction. It is hardly surprising that a representative of the engineers in his country should call him "the Engineer of the Revolution", an epithet which carries all the connotations of a man with a grand design and a will capable of bringing the revolutionary programme to fruition with talent and creativity.

We must pause for a long while now to consider his mature intellectual programme, which embraces his short and long term objectives equally. Even if we cannot consider all its details or the numerous ways in which it may be implemented, the political bases and the essentials of this integrated revolutionary programme enable us to present a picture of it which, while not containing the whole, shows both its near and far horizons.

What we shall try to depict in this part of the book is Saddam Hussein ' s revolutionary thought as he himself has presented it in its organic unity of word and deed. This unity has represented and will continue to represent the essential nature of Saddam Hussein's intellectual and pugnacious personality in all stages of his life and in the lesser and the greater struggle.

CHAPTER 1

History and the renaissance of the nation

Historical leaders of peoples and nations have generally had an extreme and deep-seated sense of history, whether or not they were aware of it. This sense has almost as much influence on them as their own nature, and is usually what represents the impulse for their actions.

Naturally the form this sense takes varies from leader to leader and from age to age in accordance with an individual's character, his role, and his psychological, social and ideological make-up, varying with the circumstances of the land and the age in which he lived. In every earlier age they built pyramids, temples and mausolea, and described their victories and achievements on the walls so that those who came after them would be aware of them. They thought that they would preserve their glory and distinction for generation after generation and century after century. This was what the rulers of Egypt,

Babylon and Assyria did in the earliest historical times. The rulers of Greece and Rome did the same with their temples, statues, columns, tombs and triumphal arches. They had a sense of history-of immortality. It was not merely a longing for eternity. Sometimes-as in the case of Gilgamesh-it was a desire for physical survival.

In modern times-as a result of social and cultural development-great temples and other types of gigantic architecture are no longer built. Peoples are not ruled by God-kings or Sun-kings. The historical sense shines forth in a different way in modern leaders. They have a tremendous concern with the writing of history itself, even if it is not a history of individuals and heroes but the history of peoples, parties and social, political and ideological movements. It is hard today to find a contemporary society-especially one in the Third World, which naturally includes our Arab societies- where recurring attempts are not made to write about history, particularly the great turning-points of history.

It should not surprise us to witness such attempts in the Socialist societies themselves, where the rulers, writers and historians profess a single view of the analysis of history and a single way of writing the history of any particular epoch. The Soviet Union was in turn under Lenin, Stalin and the twentieth congress, and on each occasion history was rewritten. It is not the only example: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia are other examples, and even China in the post-Mao era has followed the same path.

Is this rewriting of history valid or is it a mistake? We should ask first whether historical truth is so relative that it can be remolded and redrawn to accommodate different points of view and even different aims.

But then, what is historical truth itself? This seems to be an easy question to answer but in fact it is one of the hardest for the historian or the intellectual to answer.

Most people would say at once that the cornerstone of any "history" is the totality of the basic facts upon which historians agree, whatever their individual schools of thought and social philosophies. We might say for example that a Revolution took place in Egypt in 1952 and in Iraq in 1968, but such obvious and important truths are the nearest the historian can come to the builder with his raw materials for buildings, or to the painter with his colors. A builder will not start work on a building without one of his raw materials and a painter will not start a picture without one of his paints, but the building and the painting will consist of more than the materials.

The historical facts that are generally accepted are the historian's raw materials, which he moulds in accordance with his particular intellectual point of view and social background to make a history composed of a series of propositions which are acceptable to a certain number of people. The further back in the past that these raw materials are to be found, the more susceptible history is to interpretation in accordance with the views of different historians and thinkers, who all follow their own standpoints and social backgrounds.

What do we really know about ancient Greece? We know what the Athenian historians tell us in the age of Athens' glory in the fifth century B.C. But how would ancient Greece appear from the angle of Sparta, Corinth or Thebes? How would it appear in the eyes of the Persians, the slaves or the foreigners resident in Athens who were not "citizens"? Do we not really know only very little?

This applies to all ancient civilizations-Egypt, India, China, Mesopotamia and others. It is even the same with mediaeval Europe. One of the outstanding historians of our day has written: "All we know as historical truth in the Middle Ages has been selected for us by generations of historians who saw everything from a religious angle and only noted what appeared important from that angle, and disregarded events which might be important from other angles. The image of the pious Russian peasant was chattered by the Revolution of 1917, whereas the image of the pious man in the Middle Ages-whether it was true or false-cannot be demolished since virtually all we know about the Middle Ages has been selected for us by people who believed in this image and wanted others to believe in it too. When we find a number of historical facts from other sources we may be able to demolish this image, but in the meanwhile the hands of generations of dead historians have silenced the past without allowing us any possibility of uncovering the whole truth (I)".

But do we not sometimes find a text, which enables us to alter our view? In the last century, for example, positivist philosophers tried to make history an empirical science in which the "text" underwent a kind of sanctification. A fact was "true" because it occurred in the "text", which amounted to a decisive proof analogous to the proof afforded to the senses by a scientific experiment, which could not be refuted. The text became the Holy

Communion of which the historian partook in order to reach the Celestial Realm of History. Yet there was to come a time, after the nineteenth century had pulled in its sails, when outstanding historians of the twentieth century would ask hesitantly, "What do the texts-the official chronicles, histories, diaries and letters-tell us if we investigate them thorough. Why? No text can tell us more than its author wanted it to tell us: those things which he believed to have happened, or which he believed must happen or would happen. Perhaps, too, he did not want other people to think what he really thought-or perhaps he did not even want himself .to think what he thought! (2)" Then they would say, "Facts, whether or not they occur in the texts, must be reconstructed by the historian. The profit that can be extracted from the texts is this reconstruction (3)".

Once again we ask-Is historical truth relative to such an extent? The answer is no-and yes: no, because the historical, the raw material of history, is ultimately an objective event, in the sense that it has an independent reality in a particular time and place; yes, because the event is interpreted by each historian and thinker in accordance with his own political, social and ideological standpoint.

If what Hegel said (" All history is philosophy and all philosophy is history") is true, then we can never read truly objective history. We only read "the philosophy of history".

It makes no difference that the numerous treatments of an historical event are all made from angles which, whether we like it or not, emanate from equally numerous philosophies. Whether or not we accept the different treatments depends on whether we accept these philosophies as part of our own particular "philosophy" .In practice, historical research becomes philosophical research and historical writing turns into the refutation of what is essentially an historical interpretation. And the laws, which we infer from written history, are philosophical laws.

Yet it would be a false objectivity and brazen fabrication that gave equal validity to different interpretations of history and different philosophies. If this were done it would lead to social and historical nihilism, and would ultimately only help the reactionaries in every society and age. How can two interpretations of history be considered equally valid when the one considers history to be a record of the deeds of kings, princes and priests who built their pyramids on the backs of their peoples and raised their columns and triumphal arches over human skulls, and the other considers history to be an account of the interaction between peoples and their leaders in a given environment? How can two philosophies of history be put on the same level when the one considers history to be the manifestation of unknown forces, and the other views it as the interaction of the bitter struggles of men to control their own destiny? And what of those who consider history to be the history of "great individuals" and those who consider it to be the history of the deaf masses? Yet a third group views history as the product of the dialectical and historical relation between the fighting masses and undaunted elites. How can progress-the common hope of all humanity-be achieved if history is, at the end of the day, only the manifestation of individual genius or the haphazard movement of groups surrounded in mist?

It is here that selectivity begins and the nature of choice is defined, as the essence of the individual researcher, historian, philosopher or political leader becomes clear.

This is the starting-point for different analyses of history, and where philosophical interpretations are formulated and ambiguities arise.

Saddam Hussein faces the question from the angle of Arab history and the Renaissance of the Arab Community. His interpretation is to be found in three monographs.

The first has the title how is History written?' The second is 'We must not give a Picture of History which separates it from Time and the Interaction of Events'. The third is 'On Writing History'.

In the first monograph he approaches the subject from his own general philosophical position. "For whom is history written? How is it written? Is it written for the living or the dead and the martyrs? Why do we insist that history should be written in a way that gives individuals their due without doing justice to the claims of society? (4)"

His reply to the first question is that history is, of course, written for the living members of society and that histories of heroes are not merely a testimony to those who sacrificed themselves for their country. They are, perhaps at the most basic level, a lesson to those who will fight after them, providing an ideal for them to follow. History is not written for the dead in their chill, marble mausolea. Christ said, "Let the dead bury their dead", meaning that life is the first concern of the living. If we are unable to talk to the living and direct ourselves towards them, how can we address those who have become merely a treasured memory? If history is not directed at the living it loses its effectiveness and its positiveness, and perhaps also its point.

But if this stalemate seems like the logical entrance to ambiguity, the matter at the heart of the ambiguity itself is the dichotomy of the individual and society, and the historical relationship between the two. Despite mountains of books and streams of logical philosophies that have dealt with the matter, especially since historical method had its first victories in eighteenth century Europe, the problem remains open, and conflicting solutions have been suggested by intellectuals. A.J.P. Taylor wrote after World War II, "It would be possible to write the history of modern Europe in the language of the three giants: Napoleon, Bismarck and Lenin (5)", whereas Tolstoy wrote earlier, in an attempt to lessen the stature of the great men of history, "They are no more than the designations which are given to things as names (6)". Hegel developed an unprecedented philosophy of history and perhaps, in a sense, one that has not been surpassed. He wrote, "The great man in any age is he who can utter the will of that age and point out and elucidate this will for his contemporaries. He acts as the heart and soul of his age and brings it into being (7)".

Saddam Hussein makes his own position clear. He says, "Can we envisage a day when life and society, or any aspect of them, will advance towards their given History and the renaissance of the nation objectives without a leader or leaders? It is impossible for them to do so. There are no historical precedents to be followed (8)". He then pinpoints the reply to the question. "A leader is the son and the father of his society at the same time. He is the son of his society as it was originally constituted, and its father in its journey in which he plays the role of leader. His fatherhood does not mean that he is a backward tribal patriarch in the sense that he is its guardian. His fatherhood must be seen in the context of the link with revolutionary democracy ' and all the mutual interaction that is thereby entailed (9)."

What do these expressions mean? They are a denial of the views that make history an emanation from the genius of great individuals, or the purely mechanical progress of the masses as groupings, tossed hither and thither by the waves. On the one side there is society, on the other there is the leader. The bond between them is unbroken and dynamic: it involves interaction, give and take. The well-known fable of Robinson Crusoe epitomized the independence of the individual in the story of a man who took refuge on a desert island in order to build his isolated, individual kingdom on it. This myth has been shattered even in Western thought which originally conceived it in one of the many stages of European development. It was written at a time when the bourgeoisie was the rising social class, and sought to sanctify the individual. The Europeans discovered later, however, that Robinson Crusoe was not an isolated individual even on the personal level: he was an Englishman from York who carried his Bible with him and prayed to his God. Moreover, he immediately constructed a new society despite, and in contradiction to his isolation. -

As for those who consider history to be merely a record of the movements of the masses, like a scientific record of movements of the earth's crust, they embrace Marxism and turn it into "a limited number of fixed tenets: the Three Principles of Materialism, the Four Laws of Dialectic, and the Five Historical Stages of Societies (I0)".

Perhaps they are the intellectual descendants of those of whom Marx himself said, "If this were Marxism, I should know that I am no Marxist (11)". This is because, as he put it, "History makes nothing. It does not cause awesome revolutions or terrible struggles. It is man, the living man, who does everything. The revolution is his. It is he who fights (12)".

These people are faulted in their dialectic. Saddam Hussein, who struggled to give the question a firm dialectical basis and to bring it to the minds of his audience by comparisons with the relationship between father and son, did not stop at this point. He also affirmed the greatness of individuals and their heroism, which is the daughter of society. "We must not forget either that heroism is the daughter of society, which has provided its foundations. For, if a given society were not heroic in its readiness for sacrifice, it would not give birth to a hero. We must bind this foundation firmly to the role of the individual, his initiatives and his sacrifices. We must not talk of the role of the people in society while neglecting or annihilating that of the individual, or vice-versa, for both attitudes are wrong. It is essential for us to talk about both society and the individual, in a complementary and total interaction (13)."

Nevertheless, we might remember that there are two types of great men: those who continually represent the existing power and wield it, and those who struggle to create such power in order to challenge the existing authority.

It seems to us that a great historian's words hit the mark exactly: "That which, in my estimation, is essential is that we should find in a great man an outstanding individual who is a product and implementer of historical forces. He represents the forces in society and their creator: forces, which shape the face of the earth and the thoughts of men (14)."

But Saddam Hussein was not only a speculative thinker in his treatment of the matter. He was also a political leader He did not forget that he is more than a "son" of his society, or that he has become its father, so to speak, through his heroic struggle. Thus, in his second monograph, in which he deals once again with the ambiguities of "history" and which was originally a lecture he gave in answer to a report presented by the National and popular Association for the Improvement of Education, he speaks as a teacher and a father.

He said, "When we talk of the greatness of a man or of a task, it is not sufficient for us to talk of that greatness in terms which have no relevance to time and its different stages, and to the interaction of events. We must connect it with the entire constituent factors related to the period, its potentialities and the surrounding circumstances. Then greatness will shine forth in its true field (l5)."

The question of the link between historical fact and the circumstances of time and place is not new to historical thought generally. The link between the historical hero and the surrounding circumstances is a recurring theme even in some of the enlightened bourgeois historians themselves. Gibbon, the author of 'The Decline and fall of the Roman Empire', observed, "It is indeed a self-evident truth that the prevailing conditions must fit with exceptional personalities. It is possible that the genius of

Cromwell would today fade away in obscurity (l6)". Other historians have wondered whether Bismarck, for instance, would have united Germany if he had been born in the eighteenth century-though this is academic, for then he could not have been Bismarck. He might not have been able to become great, and the same goes for Napoleon, Lincoln, Lenin and others.

But Saddam Hussein is not upholding this position, which is close to the theory of "isolation from time", or at least, this is not the sole position he is maintaining. He does not intend to isolate historical facts and heroes just from their surrounding circumstances. The isolation is Just as much from the environment of the past and also from that which might possibly come to be in the future. For him history, which is the product of interaction, inevitably rebels against movement. And what does movement mean but perpetual change, continuation and individuation?

This is the starting-point of his criticism of some misleading descriptions which are sometimes applied to History and the renaissance of the nation the Revolution, such as the statement that it is the "progressive Revolution of the 17th July" or "the Revolution's progressiveness is its ultimate characteristic", He asserts, by way of contrast, that "The Revolution is essentially popular and socialist; to describe it as progressive necessarily detracts from its value and its essence as a continuous Revolution in the achievement of its strategic goals(17)", His historic decree to nationalize petroleum in Iraq is a case in point. "When we talk about the decree of nationalization now, we mean by it one of those great achievements of which we are proud. But in ten years' time it will not have the same importance for us; you will not see it in the same circumstances as we do today, for we shall have isolated it from its surrounding circumstances and weakened its connection with our lives-or removed it from the course of the Revolution, its temporal context, and from the social, economic and political factors present in the decree (18)." In these two examples he speaks about the future after the event-about the necessity of keeping the future in mind.

In many other examples he talked about the past before the event; about considering the example in isolation from its past, "The story of the Revolution and of the Arab Baath Socialist Party does not have its full historical and objective dimension unless we talk about the black picture that preceded it in the social, political, economic, cultural and military spheres, and how it was completely changed by the national sovereignty and struggle and the vitality of the masses (19),"

The historical event and the emergence of the historical hero cannot be understood by placing them in parentheses. The artificial barriers in front of historical development must be opened, though we must not be captivated by the past or future so that we lose our feet. The present must occupy our urgent attention unless the past is to lose its meaning and the future its justification. It might be said that Saddam Hussein is one of the few leaders of whom it might be observed that they have a true sense of psychological distance from the present moment.

Consider his words: "There are two sorts of things that captivate men: those which he cannot see but can only believe in, and those tangible things which he himself can directly apprehend within the boundaries of his knowledge. When we talk of something visible, not supernatural but not tangible either, we inevitably disparage the tangible. It is as though we talked of something abstract, an unrealized goal. Such a thing does not inspire enthusiasm, as much as the tangible, but at the same time it is not a spiritual matter with which we are united. In such circumstances, we may have made a miscalculation. (20)

This psychological remoteness becomes plain when an Iraqi citizen considers "Iraq", since the Arab Baath Socialist Party is a nationalist party that struggles to realize Arab unity and the establishment of an Arab nationalism in a single Arab State, and since it believes that Iraq is part of the Arab nation and a dimension within the Arab Nation. To a large extent, the "Iraqi" attribute consequently looks backward and fades before the more general and total attribute which is that of Arabism, the Arab Nation and the Arab Community.

But Saddam Hussein has a fine appraisal of psychology, and therefore declares: "We must not leave out of our calculations the fact that the Iraqi means by "Iraq" the piece of earth on which he lives, which is constitutionally his homeland, and which he is prepared to defend with his life because it is the homeland which he can see, and with which he is closely in contact every day, whereas his contact with the Arab homeland is only in a general and abstract sense. This means that we must not be submerged in abstract nationalism and abandon our immediate homeland, just as we must not be submerged in our immediate homeland so that we abandon our nationalist conceptions and the struggle to achieve them (21)."

The political leader is thus not overwhelmed by his speculative thought, just as he realizes from the depths of his being that the ship which he navigates would be wrecked without his compass, and would be torn apart by the waves before it ever reached the distant shore or the promised horizon.

Both as a speculative thinker and as a political leader, Saddam Hussein has devoted much attention to the problem of writing Arab history, impelled by his ambition to awaken the Arab Community, press it to occupy its place in the world and fulf1l its mission to humanity.

He is well aware of the import of Schopenhauer's words, "Only in history can a nation come to a complete awareness of itself22)".

This is because there can be no nation without personality, no personality without heritage, and no heritage without history. Individual personality is one of the most important concepts in social science, since it contains all the corporeal, existential, intellectual and ethical attributes, which interact with and complement each other in a given individual living in a given social environment. There is no doubt, then, that the personality of a nation must be stronger, as it embodies all its material, spiritual, geographic, historical, economic and cultural aspects-not only in their interaction with each other, but also in its growth and development. The maturity of a nation is the stage at which it becomes aware of its personality: the stage of consciousness of its self, its integration, individuation, and its distinguishing characteristics.

Individuation and integration cannot be complete in the feelings of an individual without a memory which links the different stages of his development, collects its living experiences, and provides a faculty which will be an anchor to his other faculties, which are always changing. It is the same with nations. They need memories to store their experiences, to protect their heritages, link the different stages of their development, and enable them to pick out their individual characteristics.

The memory of a nation is called history. History does not mean in this context the annals of kings, empires and dynasties, or the records of conquests and battles. It means the history of man, in a particular land: his struggles, victories, need and culture. It is the share of a particular people in human civilization.

Goethe said, "History must be periodically rewritten. This is not just because new facts are uncovered but because new events occur and an individual who observes the unfolding of his age, reaches positions from which he may survey the past and consider it in a new way (23),’

Unfortunately, the history of the Arab Nation has not yet been written from a critical and scientific viewpoint. Some historians have written it starting from the appearance of Islam, as though the Arabs had not existed before Islam, whilst other historians have written from an orthodox Stalinist viewpoint and have therefore refused to acknowledge the existence of nation and nationalism, enlightened socialist nationalists have hitherto only written isolated monographs about particular periods of Arab history. We still await someone who will write a comprehensive history of the Arabs.

But how should this be done? Saddam Hussein, in his third monograph 'On the Writing of History', suggests a programme and outlines a new way of looking at Arab history and at writing it. He starts from the general outlook of the Arab Baath Socialist Party, and rejects the two existing views of Arab history, the "Religious View" and the "Marxist View", "because the historians who take the religious view leave aside all nationalist, social and economic factors when evaluating history, and consider the spiritual factor to be the only factor in the rise and fall of nations, whereas the Marxists rely solely on a materialist interpretation of history and reject all spiritual conceptions as having no effect on the life of nations(24)".

Does the search seek a third way? No. It is a search to connect and integrate all the operative factors without placing too much stress on one to the exclusion of others.

It tries to make history a weapon in the cause of the renaissance of modern Arabism and a step towards the unity, freedom and social prosperity of the nation.

Saddam Hussein's first proposition for his method of writing history is that "the history of the Arab nation stretches back to the distant past. All the basic civilizations, which have appeared in the Arab homeland, are expressions of the personality of the sons of the nation who have sprung from one source. If these civilizations have local specificities, these form a part of the national stamp of the whole Community (25)".

Clearly this is in contradiction with the proposition that the preaching of Islam was the beginning of the Arab nation, just as it contradicts the Stalinist proposition concerning the birth of nationalism and the emergence of nations. He goes on to criticize the traditional view of pre-Islamic history as empty and ignominious, just as he criticizes the Marxist view that reduces history to the naked struggle between the classes, for both views ignore the realities of history. "When a traditionalist gives vent to the old Islamic view that considers the Arabs to be a licentious community, he imagines that he will strengthen the case of Islam and provide a firm basis for the acceptance of its religious law: This is a great mistake. We can see that it has influenced many Arab and non-Arab books and films which consider the Arabs to have been so licentious that God chose them for his revelation so that it would descend on the most licentious and sinful nation on earth and improve them. Logic and historical fact tell us that it was a nation that faced many difficulties and unusual constraints. Before it will have a revolution and receive a revelation and a universal human role, it must have many inner characteristics that make it able to bear the revelation and to fulfill its role (26)."

Saddam Hussein returns to this theme more than once. He argues that Islam is a revolution-in fact a great revolution. It is impossible for revolutions to occur in stagnant societies and in degenerate nations ruled by corruption and disintegration. It is thus impossible for us to say, "A revolution could occur in such communities, if only from a practical point of view, or that a revelation of human and revolutionary content could be given to them (27)". This is because "only men worthy of such a revelation may bear it, but nevertheless they must be at a critical point in history with regard to all aspects of life, so that the necessary renewal may take place and the revolution may be forged with regard to entirety of life (28)".

The second proposition is that history is the end product of the decisions of the collective will of the nation-that is, of all the men living on a particular area of the earth who decide that they shall constitute a nation. This means that a nation has come into existence, for it is fundamentally her own will that she should be a nation or not. And it immediately makes use of all the other phenomena and factors of life present in that history to strengthen or weaken this will.

"We Arabs, then, are one nation. The geographical extent of our land is the entire Arab homeland. This is the definitive result to which we must give our attention, and must therefore read history in such a way as to serve this truth (29)." Saddam Hussein calls for history to be written-in accordance with this viewpoint-so as to affirm the historical facts which corroborate this method, "because most great struggles and events in the annals of history becomes in relation to a man a metaphor for that which he wishes to take from history so as to ennoble the programme in which he believes. Arab history is no exception to this (30)". We are not forced to accept from this the view of Collingwood when he said, "St. Augustine looked at history from the viewpoint of the early Christian, Tallemant looked at it as a Frenchman living in the seventeenth century; Gibbon as an Englishman living in the eighteenth century. Each viewpoint represents a view, possible for the man who held it, but there is no one free of his own particular viewpoint (31)".

Collingwood wrote this to refute those who considered history merely as a collection of facts which could be written in any way, and that its events were like the letters in a game of scrabble that can be rearranged in order to support a particular view. Saddam Hussein makes it clear that he holds a contrary view: "We do not need to forge history so as to read it from a Baathist angle. We only need to understand it from a purely Baathist angle
and bring out those truths which were hidden (32)." He does not want to make up ancient or modern history or fabricate facts, events or truths-only "to swim in the stream of history and not to consider it from the outside (33)".

The third proposition is that a historian must always consider the important question, "Those facts which are written down are not all the ultimate facts, even if all 'historians and analysts have come across them, since in all stages of history there are those things which get buried and are never mentioned. This internment is a major matter socially, politically and economically (34)".

This proposition has a great importance both as regards former times, when "fabrication of information" was not as widespread as today, and as regards modern times, when this terrible art has found its way into the hands of organizations that implement the goals of the ruling powers in various societies, especially undemocratic ones. Yet the events that have taken place in many modern revolutions in the Third World, particularly in some parts of the Arab World are virtually unknown and remain buried in the hearts of their leaders. While they are still alive they may write down-or cause to be written-some or all of these events, but otherwise the story of these events departs this world with them and is buried in their tombs, or they are turned into anecdotes and stories which are written down by those who were near to them. Nasser is a tragic example of this. As soon as he died we read dozens of "judgments" on the Egyptian Revolution and the roles played by some of the principal and secondary actors in that drama, which possibly could, not come to light while the principal witness of those events was still alive.

But the story of the Revolution of the 17th-30th July in Iraq is the story of the thirteen days during which the Revolution's gates were open to the Trojan horse containing Abdurrazzaq an-Nayif and Ibrahim ad-Dawud. It took Saddam Hussein's courage, perceptiveness and ability to implement the detail of plans that saved it. Who could have known this? What if they had succeeded, and the Revolution had been waylaid and overcome, and its true adherents purged? What would history say now?

Such are the three basic propositions that Saddam Hussein lays down for those who embark on the rewriting of Arab history. They represent the principles of the new method propounded by a philosophy that has a comprehensive view of the Arab nation, Arab nationalism, and the Arab homeland. He considers this method to be the best able to express the particular Baathist view of their past, present and future alike.

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Part two

Chapter 1

1) Edward Car, Ma Huwa at- Tarikh? (What is History?), translation by Mahir Kayyali and Bayyar Biyar ' Aql, Beirut, al-Mu'assasa al-Arabiyya lid-Dirasat wan-Nashr, 1976, p. 12.

2) Ibid., p. 14.

3) Ibid.

4) Saddam Hussein, Hawla Kitabat at-Tarikh (On writing History), Baghdad, Ministry of Culture and Information, 1979, p. 7.

5) Car, op. cit., p. 47, referring to A.J.P. Taylor, From Napoleon to Stalin, 1950, p. 74.

6) Ibid, p. 47.

7) Ibid., p. 48.

8) Saddam Hussein, loc. cit.

9) Ibid.

10) Roger Garaudy, Fi Sabil Namuthaj Watani lil-Ishtirakiyya (Towards a National Model of Socialism), Arabic translation by Fuad Ayyub, Damascus, Dar Dimashq, p. 40.

11) The Chosen Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 3, p. 506.

12) Ibid., p. 625.

13) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 9.

14) Edward Car, loc. cit.

15) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 14.

16) Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter 19 (see Edward Car, op. cit, p. 47).

17) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 13.

18) Ibid., p. 14.

19) Ibid., p. 15.

20) Ibid., pp. 15-16.

21) Ibid., p. 16.

22) Schopenhauer, The World as a Will and Idea, London, 1886 (English translation by R.B. Haldov), Vol. 3, p. 228.

23) See Amir Iskander, Matha Ya'ani An Nu'id Kitabat at- Tarikh? (What does rewriting History mean?), Cairo, al-Jumhuriyya newspaper, 9-1-1968.

24) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 26.

25) Saddam Hussein, address in the extended meeting of the Information Bureau on 19-9-1977, published by Dar ath-Thawra, Baghdad, under 402 the tide of Hawla Kitabat at- Tarikh (On writing History), 1978, p. 16.

26) Saddam Hussein, Hawla Kitabat at- Tarikh (On writing History), Baghdad, Ministry of Information and Culture, 1979, pp. 23-24.

27) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 10.

28) Ibid.

29) Ibid., p. 13.

30) Ibid., p. 8.

31) R. Colingood, The Notion of History, 1946, p. 12 (see Edward Car, op. cit., p. 24).

32) Saddam Hussein, Hawla Kitabat al- Tarikh, p. 23.

33) Ibid.

34) Saddam Hussein, op. cit., p. 12.

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