How Does Saddam Hold on
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3235228 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ofra Bengio (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 79 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 90 |
| Publication date | 2000-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Foreign Affairs (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0015-7120 • E-ISSN: 2327-7793 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/20049811 |
| OpenAlex | W2595895648 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
T. S. Eliot called April the crudest month. It is also, fittingly, the month most cherished by Saddam Hussein?the month in which he was born and in which his ruling Baath Party was founded. To celebrate Saddam's April 28 one year, 15 million Iraqis reportedly lit candles to demonstrate their joy; in other years, fireworks, parties, processions (with the ruler sometimes borne in a royal carriage), and exhibitions of photographs of a beaming Saddam have marked the occasion. Saddam's is also a pretext for inaugurating grandiose projects, the latest of which was a new, eponymous city northwest of Baghdad, Saddamiyyat al-Tharthar. Occasionally the birthday cult takes an even more grotesque form, with parchment pledges of allegiance to Saddam written in the blood of the senders. Through such rituals, Iraq's absolute ruler seeks to bind himself and his subjects together for life and death. This year Saddam's birthday?his 63rd?arrived amid persistent rumors that his days were numbered. Thus far, all such predictions have proved wishful thinking. For 20 years, ever since the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, Saddam's fall has been called imminent. In the waning hours of the Gulf War, the coalition agreed to end its hostilities after a 100-hour ground war in large part because U.S. analysts figured that Saddam was doomed. Since then, Western
Economics · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Health and Conflict Studies
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,17 |
| Citation span | 2002 - 2017 (16) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |