Saddam Hussein’s Collapse Through Arab Eyes

Peloni:  Jalal provides some very keen observations about the defeat of Saddam Hussein, demonstrating the effect which comes with the defeat of such barbarians as now face Israel today inside the Yellow Line in Gaza, and on her many borders.  Failing to effect victory against these parties only provides them with an aura of invincibility, which Saddam Hussein too could have claimed had he not been demonstrably defeated in every sense of the word.

By: Jalal Tagreeb

Saddam Hussein delivering a speech against Israel (right) [1], and Saddam Hussein hooded immediately after his capture (left) [2, 3].

There is a particular sting when the downfall of Saddam Hussein is recounted not by an American soldier or an Israeli analyst, but by an Arab—someone raised within the same cultural sphere that once glorified him, echoed his rhetoric, and absorbed the myth of his defiance. The humbling of Saddam, therefore, takes on a deeper and far more ironic resonance when narrated by an Arab writer who understands, from the inside, how carefully Saddam’s image was crafted and how painfully it collapsed. This article is written precisely from that position.

Saddam Hussein’s humiliating collapse has been analysed countless times, but rarely with proper attention to the moment that destroyed his entire mythology in a single gesture: the sound of the prisoner hood being pulled over his head. That soft, rasping brush of fabric against skin—ordinary in itself—became the most devastating sound in modern Arab political theatre. It was the sound that ended a decades-long performance.

Throughout his rule, Saddam dressed as a soldier despite never having served a day as one. He attended schools, cultural events, and even children’s ceremonies in military uniform. Always the pistol at his waist. Always the theatrics of masculinity. He presented himself not merely as Iraq’s president, but as the fearless “Arab warrior” destined to lead the region against Israel and the West. His speeches were filled with admonitions: true Arab leaders, he insisted, should be prepared to pull their swords, fight their enemies, and defend “Arab honour.” It was theatre, pure theatre, designed to convince Arabs that he alone embodied the courage they lacked.

But when the real moment of confrontation arrived, when the U.S. and Britain invaded Iraq in 2003, the pistol was not drawn. The sword was not unsheathed. Saddam did none of the things he urged others to do. No sword, no gun, no resistance. Instead, he hid.

On 13 December 2003, the man who claimed he would die fighting the Americans was dragged out of a spider hole—filthy, defeated, and entirely powerless. And the detail that defines that moment more than any other is the hood. The infamous prisoner hood. The sound it made as the American operator pulled it over Saddam’s head is the sound that silenced an entire mythology.

The Delta Force operator Kevin Holland, who recently broke his silence after twenty years, described the scene with calm precision. When the soldiers reached into the cramped hole and pulled Saddam out, he offered no resistance. He was not the warrior he had claimed to be. He did not lift the pistol he had flaunted for decades. He surrendered instantly.

An American operator slid the heavy prisoner hood over the former dictator’s head. This was not a minor detail. It was annihilation. The sound of the hood’s fabric brushing down over Saddam’s face became the final punctuation mark on his decades of bluster. In that moment, Saddam saw nothing. He could only smell the polyester and hear his own breathing inside the fabric. It was the closest he ever came to facing the reality of his own cowardice and the closest he ever came to an American-made object.

He had promised Arabs that he would die fighting. Instead, he found himself wearing the same hood placed on common criminals and insurgents. He had claimed he would be the one to liberate Palestine. Instead, he was ferried away by American soldiers who told him, with ceremonial coldness: “President Bush sends his regards.”

Saddam was transported not to an American base far from home, but to one of his own presidential palaces, converted into a temporary prison. He entered through a place where he once strutted with arrogance and emerged into its underground cell as a captured man. The symbolism was too perfect to have been planned.

What became of the pistol he had flaunted for years? The weapon he insisted represented defiance and honour? The very pistol that appeared in nearly every photograph of him? It was confiscated, unused, and eventually put on public display in the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. The weapon that was supposed to witness Saddam’s courage now stands as a museum exhibit documenting the fact that he never fired a shot.

When Saddam was executed, there was no need to pull a hood over his head—not because of any imagined bravery on his part, but simply so that the witnesses could clearly verify that the man being hanged was indeed Saddam Hussein. After all, he had always been eager to be seen in public, had he not? And it was the first morning of Eid al-Adha, a day he once sought to claim symbolically for himself. The hood had already been pulled over his head once before, in the moment that truly mattered.

The Arab world must confront what this means. The leader who shouted most loudly about war, resistance, and honour was the one who hid in a hole, surrendered immediately, and allowed himself to be hooded like a troublesome detainee. His legacy is not a story of bravery.

Dr Einat Wilf articulates in this video [4]:

with piercing clarity that: civilisations move forward only after fully acknowledging defeats, not by romanticising them, rewriting them, or clinging to myths of eventual triumph. After the Second World War, Nazi Germany and Japan transformed themselves not because they held onto fantasies of reviving their old empires, but because they accepted, completely and without euphemism, that they had been defeated.

This is precisely what the Arab political imagination has refused to do for nearly a century. The collapse of Saddam Hussein should have been the most obvious moment to confront the reality of defeat. My own family history illustrates how deeply this worldview is embedded. My ancestor, a tribal leader elevated by the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, was celebrated as an invincible Arab hero and a defender of the empire’s frontiers. In tribal campaigns he was undefeated and never ever been defeated. He was admired for his force. He thought that he could defeat the British force like any other tribal force. You cannot imagine how easy his defeat was at the hands of British forces! He was captured and confined by the British, who deliberately placed him in a stable among Arabian horses to demonstrate the futility of resisting a civilisation far more advanced than the world he represented. I think that he completely deserves this symbolic defeat; it was an excellent lesson. These are not merely historical events; they are a metaphor for the fate that awaits any ideology, movement, or leader who attempts to resist modernity. Whether on the battlefield or in debate halls, the pattern is the same: those who stand against reality will be defeated by it.

I would like to thank Dr Einat Wilf for making this excellent video. Civilisation belongs to those who accept reality, not to those who resist it. Only when defeat is acknowledged can genuine reconstruction begin.

Reference:

[1] YouTube, “Saddam Hussein speech (English translation),” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5VhZTVMSM0 [Access date: 15, Nov, 2025].

[2] YouTube, “Saddam Hussein full televised speech,” https://youtu.be/K75ZTWdIML8?si=CgZNlb3r605emOd7 [Access date: 15, Nov, 2025].

[3] YouTube, “Saddam Hussein captured and hooded,” https://youtu.be/KLKwcHvGHGI?si=zoMd2j-91s3qjASY [Access date: 15, Nov, 2025].

[4] YouTube, “Bring Back Words Like “Vitctory and Defeat | Dr. Einat Wilf,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrVBXr8lqFI [Access date: 17, Nov, 2025].