Assessing The Background Of Saddam Hussein Politics Essay

Assessing The Background Of ibn Talal ibn Talal Hussein Hussein Politics EssayThe history of ibn Talal Hussein Hussein and his lead capabilities started up in tiny village on the outskirts of the city of Tikrit (G.Butt 7) where he was born in 1937 and grew up facing the atmosphere of anti-British attitude represented by state at that time. He had a very hard childhood, however he managed to modernise his basic education at school. When he was 20 course of instructions old, a young queen regnant Faisal II was killight-emitting diode by general Kasim and a gathering of army officers who overthrew a woebeg matchless monarchy that had been introduced by the British three decades earlier. ibn Talal Hussein Hussein was introduced to politics by his uncle Chajrullach and became an active member of toilet society. After an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate general Kasim, he had to escape from the country. In 1963, general Kassim was overthrown by Bath party which enabled ibn Tala l Hussein to return from emigration and take over the duties of a soulfulness responsible for Bath party internal security. After 8 months of general asymmetry and political murders, the government of Bath party fell down which forced ibn Talal Hussein Hussein to get into underground. Five years later, Bath party returned. This time, it was oft let on prepared for taking over the indicator. The new president Al Bakr wanted to introduce a democratic system in Iraq and appointed Saddam to become the head of secret police as nobody else wanted to take over this ill-tempered position considered to be a dirty meditate (S.K. Aburish, 5) . Saddam Hussein cash in ones chipsed hard on reinforcing the security forces which eliminated political elites of all political options using the most cruel methods such as tortures and murders. A year later, in 1969, he was appointed the countrys vice-president. He was still responsible for security and special forces in which he used to employ people from Al Bu Nasir kinsfolk, i.e the tribe to which he be retentiveed. By providing the poor and uneducated men with the well paid job of security agents he was able to establish a group of full trusted supporters who helped him to clean up the environment from opponents and enemies (Gazeta PL 9). After ten years, this, in fact, enabled Saddam Hussein the to take over the total power and govern Iraq. In 1979, he arrested Hasan al Bakr and became the president of Iraq. Under the pretext of fighting with traitors who wanted to give up Iraq to Syria, he arrested, tortured and killed hundreds of Revolutionary Council and Bath party members. The modality of political crime and murders did not disturb him in the development of his international career (T.Kjeilen 8). Even though Iraq was in alliance with Soviet Union, Saddam Hussein still maintained the relations with the Western countries. Owing to rapidly growing income from oil sale in 1970s (Britannica Online Encyclopedia 15), I raq under the leading of Bath party controlled by Saddam Hussein introduced an ambitious plan of developing a modern industry and agriculture to reduce the volume of imported products, and astir(p) the infrastructure (transportation, water and electric energy supply, health services). Iraq started to be regarded as a growing economy and one of the economic powers in the region. All these caused that Saddam Hussein, instead of using the revolutionary ideology to get support for his actions, could use the arguments of economic development. He started to consider himself as a leader of all the Arab countries (Wikipedia 10). However, so far though many modern industrial facilities were established, e.g. modern cement plants were built up, production efficiency could only be achieved with the assistance of international experts since the local wear out was highly inefficient (authors own observations). This led to situation that Iraqi products could hardly compete on foreign markets. Also due to the fact that there were massive needs for infrastructure, the government could hardly reach the planned goals even though the funds were available. Saddam Hussein needed something else to reinforce his position. The Islamic revolution in Iran caused that Saddam Hussein was provided with the international support, especially the USA, who wanted to stop the development of Islamic fanaticism. This led to the outbreak of the Iraqi-Iranian war during which Saddam Hussein built up the arsenal of all the different weapons that made Iraq become the Middle East military power. This was followed by invasion on Kuwait in 1990 which ended up with the Gulf War. It was noticed by J.Hickman 11 that regimes could rarely survive losing one war, and in case of Saddams government there were two wars one after another, therefore he posed a inquire of what were the leadership secrets of Saddam Hussein that allowed him to stay in power. In the following chapter I will try to answer this q uestion by analysing the leadership features of the Iraqi dictator.3. Key leadership capabilities of the Iraqi leaderIn order to define the key leadership capabilities, it would be necessary to hazard an answer to the question what features were represented by Saddam Hussein that made him an effective leader in the Middle East and Iraq during the 3 decades of 1970s, 1980s and mid-nineties? According to Stoner and Wankel 1, the effective leaders possess certain features or properties such as charisma, the ability to anticipate the events and the ability to convince people in order to get their support. A.Sharplin 2 discusses the trait approach to leadership based on a believe that the leaders who are effective possess some particular features that other people do not fuddle such as physical persuasiveness, stamina, size, intelligence, integrity, wisdom, etc. Kouzes and Posner 12 analyse how the leaders mobilize other people to do extraordinary things, what practices they use to tr ansform values into actions, visions into realities, obstacles into innovations, separateness into solidarity, and risks into rewards. All of the above mentioned features base on the behaviour of the leaders. J.B.Avolio at al 4 made an attempt to group all the different leadership features in order to define 3 groups of leadership manners including transformational leadership, transactional leadership and corrective avoidant leadership.Following Freuds theory of personality types, M.Maccoby 16 focused on description of narcissistic leaders, features of which faecal matter overly be attributed to the former Iraqi leader.Therefore, what features or leadership personal manners can we allocate to Saddam Hussein. In the following subsections I will try to analyse Saddams leadership strengths and vulnerablenesses3.1. Leadership strengths of Saddam HusseinSaddam Hussein definitely represented an autocratic leadership style which, in fact, was the only possible way to govern the countr y consisting of Kurds and Arabs who additionally subscribed to two opposing branches of Islamic religion, i.e. Sunni and Shia Muslims (G.Butt, 7). This is particularly visible nowadays taking into considerateness the difficulties faced by the USA and other Western countries who try to implement the democratic rules into this very conservative and politically shattered country.Said K.Aburish 6 identified a number of strong leadership features represented by Saddam Hussein includingextraordinary ability to see the overall picture of future achievements that allowed him to get to the in demand(p) vision,good organizers skills which was something special in the Arab mentality functioning in the environment of the Middle East this caused that he had a broad potential and was much better visible when compared to other Arab leaders,ability to get the control over planned activities by surrounding himself with relatives and basing on family and tribal connections as those that could be t rusted,ability to work massive hours,enormous popularity even though he was a dictator he was able to provide the Iraqis, especially in 1970s and mid 1980s, with what they judge and needed, i.e. wealth, infrastructure and prospects.good learners skills as he read a lot and listened to a variety of people.J.Hickman 11 identified some other features of Saddam Husseins leadership strength such asunderstanding of the value of state terror,development of a cult around his person,appreciation of the political value of relatives and close friends,ability to get the peoples acceptance for extremely groundless decisions such as declaring war against the neighbouring countries or fighting the minorities,ability to exploit the international public opinion by get support of the Muslims from all over the world and attracting the attention of others to unfair punishment of the Iraqi nation by the economic sanctions.It seems that narcissism was the leadership strength of Saddam Hussein. Accor ding to M.Maccoby 16 the narcissistic leaders become great charismatic leaders due to the fact that they have fascinating visions which get them supporters. Maccoby classifies narcissistic leaders among the people who have widespread imagination and try to create the future instead of trying to understand the future. However, he noticed that having the vision is not enough as the psychiatric patients too have visions. In case of Saddam Hussein the ability of using rhetoric and ability to arouse enthusiasm among the followers seems to be this additional feature.3.2. Leadership weaknesses of Saddam HusseinThere have been several important leadership weaknesses that brought Saddam Hussein and Iraq to the disaster. One of the most evident weak points has been the susceptibility to intimidate the people when governing the country. On one side, he had a strong security apparatus which was indicated as strength but on the other hand, by using terror he did not get the acceptance of, at le ast, a part of the Iraqi society.Ability to take risky decisions could have been classified as one of the strengths but, if related to the ability to make mistakes, both constitute the leadership weakness. This was the case with the involvement into the Iran/Iraq war which produced a debt of 65-100 million USD (S.K. Aburish 6). Even though Saddam declared the victory, he was unable to provide the Iraqi people with the fruits of this victory which led him to another mistake of invading Kuwait. Therefore, one of the serious weaknesses was Saddams ability of leading people in the wrong direction.Narcissism was mentioned in the previous subsection to constitute one of Saddams leadership strengths. However, it can also be one of the weaknesses which was the case of the former Iraqi leader. According to Maccoby 16, narcissistic leaders only accept the desired information. They love giving the speeches and are controlling during the meetings with subordinates. They are very sensitive to any criticism and react violently. In case of Saddam Hussein, any criticism was punished with the death sentence which led to situation of being completely isolated from reality. This also caused that the number of people he could trust was getting smaller and smaller (S.K. Aburish 6).3.3. Analysis of Saddams leadership capabilities and styles sounding at different leadership features of Saddam Hussein, following Bass and Steidlmeier 14, it can be stated that the Iraqi leader represented a mixture of transformational and transactional leadership style as most of the leaders do. Such features as charisma and vision could place the former Iraqi leader among those who represent the transformational leadership style as he tried and managed to get his supporters involved and committed to his visions. On the other hand, if we were to attribute the leadership style to Saddam Hussein, transactional style seems to be more(prenominal) than appropriate as he used to motivate his followers b y reward (offering well paid jobs and other benefits to his supporters) and punishment (putting people to prison, torturing and murdering). This style of leadership requires from the people that are managed or ruled to do exactly what the leader wants them to do. The Iraqi leader established clear structures that gave him full authority and power over the Iraqi subordinates whose performance was monitored. According to Bass et alia 17, the leader representing the transactional style outlines the compliance norms as well as evaluates the performance that does not meet the standards and can punish all those who do not keep the set up standards.According to D.Goleman 18 particular capabilities such as intellectual properties, cognitive abilities and possession of long term vision that contribute to certain leadership styles are extremely important but he discovered that ablaze intelligence is much more important for effective leadership of large organizations. He also discovered that the larger the organization was, the more important was emotional intelligence. Lets try to analyse Saddam Hussein regarding the elements of emotional intelligence including self-awareness, self-control, motivation, empathy and social awareness.The self awareness is the ability to realistically evaluate own personality D.Goleman 18. It seems that Saddam Hussein was unaware of his shortcomings and was altogether unable to listen to the constructive criticism. According to Goleman, people having low level of self-awareness are threatened by any suggestion of introducing improvements. This was definitely featured by the former Iraqi leader who used to punish anyone who criticized his activities. The self-control seemed to be another weak point of the Iraqi leader as he was unable to create the atmosphere of trust and very often used to lose his temper when talking to subordinates. It seems that motivation was the only element out of five emotional intelligence factors that Saddam Huss ein possessed. He had a very strong desire to achieve success. Empathy and social awareness, both associated with social relations were also weak points of Saddam Hussein as, being a dictator, he did not try to understand the feelings of his subordinates. He used to govern his subordinates by fear.4. ConclusionsThere is a long list of particular leadership features that could be attributed to Saddam Hussein showing his skills and capabilities that differentiated him from other people. However, even though there is no question most specific leadership capabilities of the former Iraqi leader, we must not forget that they were supported with very brutal and criminal activities such as tortures and murders. A.Safty 3 raised the have intercourse of the moral dimension of leadership related to the political context. He is of the opinion that dictators often characterized as people who had visions, were able to mobilize the supporters, were self-confident and had the ability to stoop th e audience should not be called effective or great leaders. Instead, he proposed to use the term of a ruler in regard to the brutal dictators such as Saddam Hussein as this word is more in line with leading by tyranny, force, fear and intimidation. The issue of ethics and morality has also been discussed by Bass and Steidlmeier 14 who noticed that somebody who represents the transformational style of leadership could be manipulative in relation to the followers, and as they stated such a person might have the public image of a saint but privately be a deceptive devil This statement ideally suits Saddam Hussein who represented certain features of transformational leadership which were not authentic but pseudo-transformational as named by Burns 13. Due to these reasons, even though Saddam Husseins leadership reflected both transformational and transactional features which is normally treated as the best combination of styles, it is so difficult to talk about leadership capabilities as the ethics and morality have been disregarded. In this particular case we should, in fact, talk about the dictatorship capabilities instead of leadership capabilities even if some leadership features discussed above in this physical composition can be attributed to this Middle East dictator. The analysis of the emotional intelligence of Saddam Hussein has shown that he was missing the most important features such as self-awareness, self-control, empathy and social awareness which are a crucial thing for effective leadership.