Iraq--a Familiar Conundrum
I have read Shireen T. Hunter’s article “What Is Saddam Hussein Up To?” (Commentary, Sept. 25) and agree. Hussein’s vision is gaining leadership of the Arab world to move it toward a destiny that he deeply believes is the birthright of the Arab people. Hussein wished to create a technologically advanced, economically sophisticated “Arab nation” led by Iraq, recapturing the Muslim greatness that was lost almost three centuries ago in what the historian Gibbon called “the great debate” between Christianity and Islam; the debate ended with the rise of European and Christian world dominance and the Arab fragmentation of the Ottoman Empire.
CLARENCE B. SANTOS
Los Angeles
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