Despite fears spread by the peace movement and other opponents of the Bush administration that a military strike against Saddam's dictatorship will enrage the 'Arab street' and provoke further acts of terrorism, the opposite appears to be happening. Not only that, but a serious call for him to commit suicide was made.
The Arab street is quiet and the terrorist cells quiescent for the moment. (How an attack on Saddam can make these terrorists more dangerous and fanatical than they already are is never explained by critics of Washington's anti-Saddam policy).
However, in what seems to flag a shift in Arab opinion, calls are being made from Arab newspapers and by intellectuals for Saddam to abdicate or even commit suicide. Saudi papers have been prominent in demanding that Saddam stand down and spare the Iraqi people the deprivations of war.
The Saudi daily Okkaz urged Saddam "to take a courageous, responsible and historic." The paper also of his "regime that it is difficult to defend or to sustain." Jordan's King Abdallah of Jordan appealed to Saddam, saying that "only a miracle can save the area from war." Al-Hayat said that Saddam and those central to his regime should hand power "to a transitional team that would resolve the pending issues of weapons of mass destruction."
Arab intellectuals circulated a petition calling for Saddam's abdication, saying that we "Call upon public opinion in the Arab world to exercise pressure for the dismissal from power of Saddam Hussein and his close aides in Iraq in order to avoid a war that threatens with catastrophe the peoples of the region. [They also call] for the rule of democracy in Baghdad and for the stationing across Iraq of human rights monitors from the United Nations and the Arab League to oversee the peaceful transition of power"
In an even more striking example of opposition to Saddam Ali bin Shuwail al-Qarni, Chairman of the Board of the Saudi Society for Information and Communications, wrote in the Saudi daily al-Jazeera that Saddam should "reach out to the suicide revolver and fire the shot of mercy to finish the tragedy which he has started." Al-Qarni is very close to the Saudi royal family.
It now seems that the Arab world has a better grip on the reality of Saddam and the Bush administration's true intentions than does the anti-American 'peace movement'.
