Saddam Hussein: A Political Biography

by Efraim Karsh, Inari Rautsi

Over ten years after his armies were routed in Desert Storm, the world continues to deal with, and be persistently thwarted, by the menace of Saddam Hussein. Here in this timely biography, authors Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, experts on Middle East history and politics, have combined their expertise to write what is largely considered the definitive work of one of the century's most reviled and notorious figures.

Drawing on a wealth of Iraqi, Arab, Western and Israeli sources, including interviews with people who have had close contact with Saddam Hussein throughout his career, the authors traces the meteoric transformation of an ardent nationalist and obscure Ba'th party member into an absolute dictator.

Placing Hussein in the larger context of the ancient and modern Arab world and Iraqi history and traditions, Karsh and Rautsi examine the nature of the political system in which he thrived, a system built on blood and fear, betrayal and deceit. Skillfully interweaving a realistic analysis of Gulf politics and history, this authoritative biography is essential for understanding the mind of a modern tyrant.

Genres: Biography, History, Middle East, Politics, Biography Memoir, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Efraim Karsh is director of the Middle East Forum, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, and Professor of Middle East and Mediterranean Studies at King's College London.

Born and raised in Israel, Mr. Karsh earned his undergraduate degree in Arabic language and literature and modern Middle Eastern history from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and his graduate and doctoral degrees in international relations from Tel Aviv University. After acquiring his first academic degree, he served for seven years as an intelligence officer in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), where he attained the rank of major.

Prior to coming to King's in 1989, Mr. Karsh held various academic posts at Columbia University, the Sorbonne, the London School of Economics, Helsinki University, the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington D.C., and the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel-Aviv University. In 2003 he was the first Nahshon Visiting Professor in Israel Studies at Harvard.

Mr. Karsh has published extensively on the Middle East, strategic and military affairs, and European neutrality. He is the author of fifteen books, including Palestine Betrayed (Yale); Islamic Imperialism: A History (Yale); Empires of the Sand: the Struggle for Mastery in the Middle East 1798-1923 (Harvard); Fabricating Israeli History: The "New Historians" (Routledge); The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton); Saddam Hussein (Free Press); Arafat's War (Grove); and Neutrality and Small States (Routledge).

Mr. Karsh has appeared as a commentator on all the main British and American television networks and has contributed over 100 articles to leading newspapers and magazines, including Commentary, The Daily Telegraph, The International Herald Tribune, The London Times, The Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

He has served on many academic and professional boards; has acted as referee for numerous scholarly journals, publishers, and grant awarding organizations; has consulted the British Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as national and international economic companies/organizations; and has briefed several parliamentary committees. A recent CENTCOM directory of Centers of Excellence on the Middle East ranked Mr. Karsh as the fifth highly quoted academic among 20 top published authors on the Middle East, with his articles quoted three times as often as the best of the four non-American scholars on the list.

He is founding editor of the scholarly journal Israel Affairs, now in its sixteenth year, and founding general editor of a Routledge book series on Israeli History, Politics and Society.

(meforum.org)

Reviews

[Wesley · Rating 5 out of 5]

God as my witness, this is one of the best books I have read in a long time. The author takes careful time to delineate every one of the remarkable connections between Saddam Hussein and his striving to parallel the great leaders of old. This style of writing carries this book to be not only an interesting biography, but something like an epic.

What Lenin was to Stalin, Stalin became to Hussein and Saddam took great care to model Stalin's policies as best practices in dealing with his own people. The author draws on Saddam's rich history as a resident of Tikrit to show that Saddam based his much of his personal legitimacy on Mesopotamian legends. This began with his claiming of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in his genealogy and later even adding the Prophet Muhammad.

Saddam began his life with a strict regimen of personal discipline and while in prison he would get up early, exercise, then hone his debate and rhetoric skills with the other prisoners. The author illustrates how Saddam's growing paranoia later in life stole his sense of personal balance and forced him to cling tightly to his power. This ended in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in which Hussein refused to give up an obvious defeat out of fear that losing to the U.S. would admit too much weakness.

Obviously, I recommend anyone interested in men seeking power and the complexities that can arise in doing so read the book. Even if only the first few chapters.

[Malik Umer]

BOOK NAME: SADDAM HUSSAIN A POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
AUTHOR: EFRAIM KARSH AND INARI RAUTSI
PUBLISHING DATE: December 17, 2002

INTRODUCTION
Authors Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, experts on Middle East history and politics, have combined their expertise to write what is largely considered the definitive work on Iraq’s fifth president. Drawing on a wealth of Iraqi, Arab, Western, and Israeli sources, including interviews with people who have had close contact with Saddam Hussein throughout his career, the authors trace the meteoric transformation of an ardent nationalist and obscure Ba’ath party member into a dictator and geopolitical player.

Probably the best biography of Saddam Hussein…it presents a coherent view of a man who has generated a good deal of mythology” (Roger Hardy, BBC World Service).

ARGUMENT - 1
From Saddam’s key role in the violent coup that brought the Ba’ath party to power, to the Iran-Iraq War, the Gulf War, and beyond, Karsh and Rautsi present a detailed biography that skillfully interweaves analysis of Gulf politics and history. Now with a new introduction and epilogue, this authoritative biography is essential for understanding the life and influence of this modern tyrant
ARGUMENT - 2
Apolitical biography seems to invite the reader to get inside the mind of its subject. This attempt falls short of that goal but is nonetheless a useful account of how Saddam came to power and how he behaved at various moments in his political career. The authors are on track when they reject the simplistic notion that Saddam is crazy, and they remind us that on many occasions he has shown an adaptability when his personal survival required it.
ARGUMENT-3
Karsh and Rautsi have set a standard for evidence and analytical rigor that other biographers will be hard-pressed to match. ... Not only do the full documentation and precise style reflect a long investment in research and writing, but the authors have produced a subtle interpretation of Saddam, which casts him as a man forged by his society even as he sought to reforge it.
But we do not get much insight into why he behaves as he does. The authors refer frequently to his "insecurity," but most leaders in the Middle East are insecure, and not all are like Saddam. Unfortunately the authors frequently write as if they know what Saddam was feeling or thinking.

CONCLUSION
Over ten years after his armies were routed in Desert Storm, the world continues to deal with, and be persistently thwarted, by the menace of Saddam Hussein. Here in this timely biography, authors Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, experts on Middle East history and politics, have combined their expertise to write what is largely considered the definitive work of one of the century's most reviled and notorious figures. Surprisingly they see his decision to go to war with Iran in 1980 as forced upon him, a view Saddam has always been eager to promote, but which many dispute.

Published By:
Malik Umer
21-ENV-05
UNIVERSITY OF ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY TAXILA

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saddam Hussein was born in Iraq in 1935. He had a pretty rough start to life. His father and sibling died before he was born, and so distressed his mother that she tried to abort her pregnancy and kill herself. Once he was born, she did not have any desire to bond with him or care for him, and he was subsequently taken in by an uncle. In the meantime, his mother remarried. Once Saddam returned home, his stepfather beat him mercilessly. I would imagine that may have had something to do with his later personality, but I am no expert in psychology.

Saddam attended a very nationalistic high school before enrolling in a law school in Iraq. He studied law for two years, and dropped out to join the Ba'ath Party, which was a socialist party. His uncle was a member, which is probably why he joined this party instead of some of the other more established and far reaching socialist parties. He got up to plenty of activities while he was having to do with this party, which would really be classified as low level crime and domestic terrorism. He began building a reputation for himself, especially in the late 1960's and early 1970's. He made a big move into politics, putting himself out there as a very progressive socialist who was going to fix all the infrastructure and make the standard of living better for everyone in Iraq. In actuality, he did do a lot using oil funds to repair roads and develop industries. Of course, he also used terror tactics against members of his own government, family, friends, and the Iraqi people as a whole. He was notoriously corrupt and untrustworthy. If he thought anyone said a word against him or his policies, they vanished to a prison or worse. If he suspected a coup or any dissent, gone.

I really did not know a lot about Saddam Hussein's political life and ideas. I knew that he was a dictator, and a very cruel person. I knew that he caused a lot of turmoil for his own citizens. I remember his capture and trial being in the news, but it didn't really mean a lot to me at the time. I think I was about 14 when that occurred. This book really went into great detail about his political interests, and I found it to be educational but still maintained interest. It wasn't boring to read, as political biographies can sometimes be. I learned a lot about the state of affairs prior to the Iraq Invasion post 9/11.

[Reza Amiri Praramadhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this book, we followed the life of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi dictator, from his humble beginning as lowly village thug, rising steadily through the ranks of (Iraqi) Ba’athist Party until he reached the top himself, then directing Iraqis through two catastrophic wars. Throughout the book, one theme is consistent, that Saddam based his politics on the basest and rawest of instinct, the survival instinct.

Thus, as he climbed higher up the greasy pole, he became more paranoid than before, especially being surrounded by sycophants and close family members. Guided by will to survive, he became and pragmatic and opportunistic in his dealings, both political and foreign. Therefore, he was able to boast about solidarity on Palestine issue while having a secret deals with the Israelis, using foreign nationals as hostages, those dishonorable sort of things scoundrels do.

However, Saddam was not without flaws for his strategy relied on raising the stakes higher and higher, while the other parties lower them, and when the other parties called Saddam’s bluff, that’s where everything went downhill for him, just like what happened in Iraq-Iran War and the First Gulf War between Iraq and US-led global alliance. Amazingly, after such catastrophic defeat, Saddam clung on to power, in courtesy of US and other global powers reluctance to further the war goal from kicking Iraq out of Kuwait, and the story within this book ends here.

This book manages to eloquently describes Saddam Hussein, his political career, his (mostly murderous) quirks, his ambition and ubiquitous cult of personality. A must read for everyone who is interested in Middle-eastern history and geopolitics.

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two versions of this book. One was published in 1991 and covers through the end of the Gulf War. The other was published in 2002. I read the 1991 hardcover version.
The chapters are largely chronological with each being about a major section of Hussein's history and usually have an overarching point about Hussein being made while covering his life and rise to power/time in power.
Very enjoyable overall, but there was no redemption arc which was disappointing.
Would have been cool if he realized his ethnic cleansing of the Kurds was wrong and instead of invading Kuwait decided to join NATO or something.

[Patrick Kilroy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinatingly pragmatic analysis of the mechanics and motives of Saddam’s regime. A study of an individual, but also in Machiavelianism and the nature of economic / military power in the modern Middle East. Reveals much about Pan-Arabism, the Arab-Israeli conflict in the 20th century, and the nature of western / American involvement in the region, and the era of UN of interventionism that followed the end of the Cold War.
Just a shame it was published before the Iraq war and therefore didn’t get to round out the whole story.

[Saman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not very comprehensive as a political biography and little bit dry. They barely touch upon his early life and the book almost starts from 68. Most of the book about the wars.

[Jack Goldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good informative read on a real Jerk!

[Bryce Prater · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great biography, and I especially enjoyed reading about pre-1980s Iraq (and Saddam's early life)

[Michael Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very good narrative on the reign of Saddam Hussein. I would recommend this book to anybody wanting to know about the rule in Iraq before the American invasion.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good overall biography of Saddam with a few major points to make:

1. Saddam, above all, was a "ruthless pragmatist." He rose up in a brutal political culture, raised by his Uncle Khairallah to view the world as dog-eat-dog. He climbed the Baath Party ranks by allying himself with disgruntled people (usually in the military) to take down whoever was on the next rung of the ladder. He would then turn on his co-conspirators almost immediately. Karsh sees SH's acts of foreign aggression as a mix of anticipatory self defense (somewhat legitimate with Iran) and attempts to shore up domestic political control. He would back off on foreign adventures fairly consistently if they jeopardized his rule at home and then use overwhelming force to crush domestic challenges.

2. Saddam was not non-ideological, but ideology was largely instrumental for him. He certainly believed in Arab nationalism as a younger person, but this faded as he gained more power. He was probably an Iraqi nationalist, although his association of IQ with himself made his Iraqi nationalism another form of narcissism. Karsh does a great job showing how SH reversed himself repeatedly on issues like women's rights, Arab nationalism, and Islam when politics dictated.

3. Saddam was violent, but mostly sane. It's hard to see a truly insane person rising this high in the backstabbing (literally) world of Iraqi politics with all the plotting and strategizing he had to do. He could be personally violent, like when he personally executed the Minister of Health during the IR-IQ War for suggesting that he temporarily step down from power in order to facilitate a peace deal with Iran. Violence, like ideology, was purely instrumental for Saddam. In that sense, he's a product of Iraqi political culture, which has never found a way to de-legitimize domestic political violence and exclude it from the public sphere.

I think Karsh pushes the pragmatist/sane argument a little far in this otherwise solid biography. By the 1990's, SH had so few people who were willing to speak truthfully to him and was so paranoid about internal challengers that he was killing off competent officers and reducing everyone else to terrorized submission. The bar for violence just seemed so low (a whisper of suspicion would suffice) that it is hard to see him as fully rational. Still, a policymaker reading this book (let's say, before the IQ War) would have to agree with the general thesis that SH was above all a political survivor who was unlikely to attack the US directly or by proxy and bring down the world's largest superpower on his head.

I'd recommend this book for people looking for a solid primer on how Saddam fit into Iraqi politics and history who also wants a fairly concise volume. This information is getting a little repetitive to me so I didn't enjoy every part of this book, but it's still good work.