The Fallen Idol

"The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life."
-- Walter Benjamin

Baghdad, Iraq, August 8, 1989
The invitation card sent to selected guests described it as 'one of the largest works of art in the world'. The sculpture weighed over 130 tons and at its apex was more than 40 metres above the ground. The 'Victory Arch,' as it was called, was conceived by the President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, who first announced the plan in a speech on 22 April 1985. His initial sketch and an extract from that speech were reproduced on the invitation to the sculpture's public opening four years later, and reads as follows:

"Under the guidance of the Leader-President, Saddam Hussein (God preserve and watch over him) . . .The ground bursts open and from it springs the arm that represents power and determination, carrying the sword of Qadisiyya [a reference to a battle between Arabs and Persians in A.D. 637]. It is the arm of the Leader-President, Saddam Hussein himself (God preserve and watch over him) enlarged forty times. It springs out to announce the good news of victory to all Iraqis, and it pulls in its wake a net that has been filled with the helmets of the enemy soldiers, some of them scattering into the wasteland."

The human rights organization Human Rights Watch, after detailing in 1990 the Iraqi regime's subjection of Iraqi citizens to forced relocation and deportation, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture, "disappearance," and summary political execution, and after describing the methods used by the Iraqi government to impose its rule-- a monolithic party organization, a pervasive system of informants, and secret police agencies that are empowered to arrest, detain without trial, torture, and kill -- concluded: "The government of Iraq is one of the most brutal and repressive regimes in power today, denying its citizens virtually all basic rights and suppressing even the smallest gestures of dissent."

Since Saddam Hussein had come into power in 1979, the country had been in a continual state of war, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dying in the senseless eight year conflict with Iran that Hussein himself instigated. It was at the conclusion of this eight year war with Iran, and on the eve of Iraq's propelling itself into war with the United States, that this monument was opened to the public.

As Benjamin observes, "All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war... [Mankind's] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics which Fascism is rendering aesthetic."

The 'Victory Arch' aestheticized not only destruction of people outside Iraqi borders, but also the destruction of people within Iraqi borders. That Hussein's personality cult remained wildly popular under these conditions -- giant billboards of Hussein's figure littering the Iraqi countryside, artists making livings from drawings of Hussein in their own blood, Hussein appearing on Iraqi television hour after hour, spontaeous rallies occurring in his name, most Iraqi men imitating his hairstyle and bearing, and most homes possessing at least one photograph of him-- is testament not only to the forces of terror at Hussein's disposal, but also to his ability to deify himeslf in the eyes of the Iraqi people. He was the only person left in Iraq who was free to contradict himself.