A Man to the word !!

'A man to the word', an Arabic sexist phrase which praises the manhood, usually characterized as the ability to fight. Abdul-Bari Atwan, the editor of London-based al-Quds al-Arabi, described Saddam Hussein in his article today as 'a man to the word'. He was making an absurd comparison between Gaddafi's men and Saddam's men. He criticized Gaddafi's men for they deserted their 'leader' just in order to save themselves, and praised Saddam's men for they resisted all temptations and stayed to the last moment on the side of their leader. Beside this selective memory and wishful narrative, he counted what he considered as 'achievements of Saddam',  like reducing illiteracy (the actual rate of illiteracy the moment of Saddam's fall was around 50% of population),  building Iraq (the amount of money spent for purchasing weapons from western countries and Russia under Saddam's regime were at least 20 times more than those allocated to build the country), and fighting Iran for 8 years (Saddam declared the war against Iran after having abjured Algeria's treaty which he signed in 1975 with Shah of Iran, sending his troops to cross the international border. However, two years later Iraq had to defend her own borders against the Iranian advance, and in 1990 Saddam sent a letter to Rafsingani, then the president of Iran, declaring that Iraq is ready to accept Algeria's treaty again and to restore the pre-war border demarcation as 'if nothing had happened'; the latter phrase is not mine but it was written in that letter.
Atwan, a devoted defender of all populist leaders, tried to distort reality by giving credits to Saddam's men (in my words, slaves), acclaiming that they did not desert him because they were faithful to the leader and 'men to the word'. However, he forgot hundreds of party officials, generals and statesmen who became opponents to Saddam, including his closest assistant and husband of his oldest daughter, Hussein Kamel, who were killed mercilessly in his house in Baghdad. What about Nizar al-Khazreji, Wafiq al-Samare'i, Hasan al-Alawi, ..etc.., were not they 'men' of Saddam or their manhood had not been proven. What has Atwan neglected in his usual selective memory, that the persons he mentioned as the faithful men of Saddam (Aziz, al-Sahaf, and al-Hadethi), were not in the main circle of power as much as they were public faces of the regime (in other words,  PR officials), and they did not desert Saddam (which is something unsure in the case of al-Hadethi whose brother was executed by Saddam's regime) because they were afraid of destiny similar to that faced by all Saddam's opponents, including his relatives and close allies (Adnan Khair allah, Adnan al-Hamdani,Hussein Kamel,..etc..).
According to Atwan, manhood is to defend the tyrant regardless of what has he done to his own people, as for this guy (who I hardly  tried to understand)  people do not matter as much as the cause, which in the case of Saddam was to make himself praised all the time by Atwan and his likes, rather than taking care of his own people.
رجال القذافي ورجال صدام