Saul Silas Fathi Transcript (2)

March 22, 2008

Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. We have been speaking with Saul Silas Fathi, and his book is called “Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad and the Return”. I guess what I am interested in chatting about now is, I guess, the future and where we sit right now.The Middle East is such a mess right now, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq conflict, clearly Iran is a mess. Tell me a little bit about your take on all of this.

Saul Silas Fathi: Well, I supported Bush in trying to get rid of Saddam Hussein. Because he felt that the Iraqi people deserved better. But, I was totally opposed to invading Iraq, especially the way we did it. I felt we went to destroy a regime. We ended up destroying a 6,000 year old civilization. So in that it was very sad to see what happened to the Iraqi people. In five years, according to some reports, 800,000 Iraqi people, including 50,000 children, died.The very premise of bringing democracy to an Arab country was completely based on falsehood and ignorance. There are 22 Arab countries, none of them are democratic. And none of them were elected by the people and probably never will. Among our biggest allies are some of those dictatorships and so forth. So this was totally uncalled for.But, at the same time it is realistic to know that we cannot leave Iraq before we’ve fixed it, before we’ve built its power again. Because we dismissed the army of 300,000, sent them home, created 50% unemployment and terrible destitution. For the first time in the 6,000 year history the Iraqi people have no drinking water to drink, and 60% of the people have no electricity.And unemployment is still, in certain places, over 60%. And this is what causes the most misery in Iraq. It is not any loyalty to Saddam. These people are just trying to feed their families, and that is why they were in the armed forces but they were punished collectively. I think that was the most colossal mistake that we made is dismissing the army.If we did not dismiss the army, but purged it. With maybe 15 or 20,000 people we would have been left with enough power, enough organization to govern and police the country and supplement it by just a few of our forces.But, now that we are in there our long-term interest is intertwined with the future of Iraq. If we move out prematurely there is absolutely no question in my mind that the Iranians will take over de facto of Iraq, and that is the dream that they have been dreaming for thousands of years of doing.The idea that the Sunnis and the Shiite were fighting between them for thousands of years is a total falsehood, total misrepresentation of real history. For 1400 years after Mohammed’s death there were no conflicts, no killing and absolutely no bombing or burning of any of the opposition’s mosques for 1400 years.Everything was settled during the first hundred years after Mohammed’s death, and the Shiite moved from Arabia to Iraq and built two magnificent little cities, called Najaf and Karbala. This is where the leadership got assassinated eventually, Ali and Hasan. And they became like a Mecca to the Shiite people. So there were approximately 100,000 pilgrims coming through Iran every year into Iraq to worship and to pray and so forth and so on.The notion that was perpetuated here that these people have been fighting and we came in to make peace between them, all of that is a total, total falsehood. I lecture on that extensively, by the way. I am a scholar in Islam, and I lecture about the history of Islam and the Middle East.

Kent: Such a tragedy when you say 800,000 people, and I have heard similar figures from the Citizens for Social Responsibility. We hear about it so seldom in the media, and I find that a very painful reality.

Saul: That is a point of contention that I have all the time with the media especially CNN. Nobody wants to hear it. Nobody wants to know the facts, and they often time are just ignorant. They are not misleading on purpose; they are just ignorant of the facts. They send reporters and the reporters end up in the Green Zone. How can you report about a country with a 6,000 year civilization by staying in the Green Zone?I have not seen one Iraqi family at dinner sitting with a reporter and having dinner with the children and asking some nice questions. I have not seen one that shows the two great rivers of Iraq and with the boats going through it and with all of the millions and millions of palm trees lined up in the streets and on the beaches and so forth. All you see is killing and murder and bloodshed. This is not Iraq; it never was.Unfortunately, I can tell you - some people think I have a bleak outlook - I think it will never settle and it will never go back to normal until another one just like Saddam emerges.

Kent: Wow. This is a fascinating discussion, and surely I could listen to you for hours about Iraq. I would like to ask also about Israel and Palestine. This situation never seems to end. It started in ‘48. It has been going on for a hundred plus years, you know.There was that rush to see who could get more people in there to see who would claim statehood back in the ’40s. Tell me what you think. Where does this history resolve? Is its ever going to happen?

Saul: It definitely is not going to happen on Bush’s clock. As he intended for this year. He said he will go back in six months and have peace between the two factions and that the Palestinians have their own country. As long as the Palestinians are in the grip of Hamas and people like Hamas and Hezbollah and such, and supported by states like Iran and so forth, I don’t believe it will ever happen.I don’t believe that there will be peace or that a country, a Palestinian country will be established. When two countries want to live together and two people want to live together, they have to make peace and they have to, in their heart, allow for the existence of the other. That has not happened, because they are taught hatred in their schools and Madrasas around the world.If I may say so as well, when Bush spoke about the “axis of evil,” he left out the two most important members of that axis and that is Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. They are the ones who finance all the terrorism in the world. They are the ones, more than Iran, more than Iraq ever did and certainly more than North Korea ever did. They should have been included in that speech.

Kent: So your book is called “Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad and the Return.” How much do you get into where we are today?

Saul: I don’t really do that except for the first 10 chapters, where I speak about Iraq and everything. But then later on, I concentrate strictly on my life and where it took me on my search, which seems to be a lifetime search for meaning and my position in the world.

Kent: And your lif…

Saul: There’s a lot of reflection back and forth and there’s fond memories that are brought up at many different junctures. I lived in Brazil as well and then I served in the US army and I ended up in Korea with the first calv. So I paid my price several times over.

Kent: You talk about in your book, in that crucial chapter when you escape from Baghdad and earlier you talk about having witnessed to hanging as a small boy. It seems that your very interesting views about war in the world and things that I’ve not heard before. How did it shape you to witness that event?

Saul: It absolutely shaped my life and there were several such occurrences that are depicted in the book, especially the escape and what happened to one of the babies escaping with us. My father, when I was nine years old and he was in hiding… No, he was not in hiding yet, but he was expecting for several months for his name to be on a black list in the newspapers.He continued to work and so forth, but he was so afraid things will start happening. What they were trying to do to appease the high level military, who threatened to do a coup, which they attempted many, many times, especially in 1941. To appease them and to appease the guy on the street, the ignorant, uneducated people. They decided to blame everything on the Jews and on Zionism.So they began making lists of prominent Jews, some of the wealthiest and some of the most important in government. And either arrest them, torture them or hand them publicly. So, there came a point when I was nine years old, where a friend of the family who was a distant relative, was accused of being a communist and a Zionist.Which is the way they always accused the Jews because that would get the most mileage out of the Arabs, being anti-communist and anti-Zionism. They hanged them. My father decided to take me to view the hanging in public. My mother protested very much, but she had no power. He convinced her that I have to grow up quickly, not to lead a normal child’s life. This will do it.So, on the way there, he told me not to show any emotion and not to cry, just watch and leave all the emotions and the burst when we get home. This was a very terrible experience for me. Before they hanged him, they told him to recant and that his life would be spared if he admits to the charges of being a Zionist and a communist.And being young guy, 23 years old, he was really falling apart. They were holding him to support him. He agreed and he said, OK, I confess. They went ahead and they hanged him anyway.

Kent: Oh, my.

Saul: The public threw tomatoes and eggs on him and so forth while he was hanging. And he was left hanging for two days in a public place before them. So that the thousands of throngs of people would have a chance to witness it.

Kent: What a horrible experience for a child.

Saul: Yes, this was terrible.

Kent: This has been a fascinating discussion. I could talk to you for hours. The book is called “Full Circle: Escape from Baghdad and the Return.” We’re definitely thinking about the Middle East right now. This is a wonderful introduction to the true reality of Iraq, before all this happened. And also of Israel and at the beginnings of Israel.Thank you so much for being on the show.