Yesterday I talked to a very interesting man.
Unassuming, a dentist, and on the older end of middle age, the soft-spoken one with a quiet strength was a Chaldean Christian.
I had spoken with him a few times, knew his nephew, and had no idea about his secret life.
He works very hard helping Chaldean Christian escape the clutches of the devil Jihad.
He had been to Iraq on rescue and relief missions four times during the dark days of ISIS’ reign of tyranny, and upon a first glance, you would have never thought such a thing from his was possible.
But looks can be deceiving.
“For the Lord sees not as man sees,” God told the Prophet Samuel in 1st Samuel 16:17b.
“Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
“ALWAYS FIGHTING THE LAST WAR”
During the course of our discussion, we talked about many things. The History of the Middle East. The Crusader Wars for the Holy Land. The plight of refugees we each knew. The Afghanistan disaster.
And of course, as any conversation will turn to with an Iraqi Chaldean Christian, we began to discuss Saddam Hussein.
Now anybody who knows me knows that I have a fascination with Saddam…some say an obsession.
When I was writing my second book in 2015, All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War, I had nearly every book written on Saddam in English, save for four of them.
Those I didn’t have, I was reading either online or at the various libraries I was a member of.
“Always fighting the last war,” my Dad would often shake his head.
But I think old Saddam is worth studying.
And my discussion with my newfound friend revealed why.
A CHANCE AND GUARANTEE
What my friend told me was what I have heard from many Chaldeans over the years.
And it’s something that you have heard many times too, on the news, from political pundits, from all sides of the political aisle.
It’s that while Saddam was bad, the terrorists were scared of him, and the Christians had a chance at survival .
Now there’s a caveat here…and that caveat is a chance of survival.
A chance to survive in a slavish, servile, degrading existence filled with terror of when the shoe would drop if they were next on the dictator’s chopping block.
And from the butcher’s cleaver, heads would roll…of all races, religions, colors, and creeds.
Many Chaldean friends have related this to me, as do the 2 million documents in Saddam Hussein’s archives that were seized and have been steadily translated over the last decade, as well as the written testimony of many others who endured his regime.
But the chaos of the Al Qaeda/Mahdist Insurgency that grew on our watch, and the sheer and utter brutality of ISIS that emerged in the power vacuum created by our abandonment…
All these things made the chance of survival of the Saddam Era seem like paradise in comparison to the guaranteed extermination at the hands of the horror hordes that came after.
And this fact breaks my heart.
And I told him so.
WHY I WROTE
I wrote All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War for three groups.
I wrote it out of a love for the People of the Middle East.
I wrote it out of a veneration for the American and Allied Heroes who fought for their Freedom.
And I wrote it out of respect for our Jihadi Foes embodied by the Butcher of Baghdad himself, Saddam Hussein.
You may think respect is a strange word to use here, but just like my unassuming friend, there is more to it than meets the eye.
SOMETHING MORE TO IT
Yes, our foes were evil, and I document that evil in depth.
What’s more, I even connect the disparate strands of evil into a cohesive web that many analysts, motivated by the political considerations of the hour, have missed right before their very eyes…
Including the close Ideological, Strategic, Operational, and Tactical connections between Saddam Hussein, Al Qaeda, and the latter-day ISIS.
But you see, there is something more to it than all of that.
And that is because our foes were also something else…
THE TRUTH BEHIND THE PHRASE
Our foes were strong.
They were a force to be reckoned with. A force to be contended with. And a force to learn from.
The reality is the same throughout the centuries: when we succeeded in the Middle East, we were strong…stronger than the devil foe.
But when we failed was when we were weak.
Sure, we were always kind, always giving, always benevolent, always generous.
But when coupled with weakness, terror reigned supreme.
And the legend that is born on the lips of the people of Middle East throughout the ages has always been the same:
CAST OUT THIS DEVIL TODAY
Saddam in many ways was stronger than us.
His body may have died, but his ghost remains.
It haunts us…our soldiers and statesmen and citizens alike.
For his will lives on to triumph over ours.
It is this ghost in my words and actions that I see to exorcise from our peoples.
Because the reality is, the Last War is still going on inside the Hearts and Minds of Man.
“For the Lord sees not as man sees,” God told the Prophet Samuel in 1st Samuel 16:17b.
“Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
If you find that your heart is haunted, then get your copy of All Men Follow the Strongman: The Forgotten History of the Iraq War.
Give it a read, learn it’s lessons…
And cast out this devil today.
Sincerely,
Richard Barrett
12-29-2024
Written at 5:04 PM, somewhere in the USA…
PULP FICTION RENAISSANCE 