De-Ba’athification

The challenge we face:

Ahmad Saleh al-Wan languished for 15 years in an Iranian prison, a foot soldier in Iraq’s unwinnable war against its neighbor. When he went home in 1997, his eyesight ruined, Saddam Hussein gave him his reward: he was made a “group” member in the Ba’ath Arab Socialist Party, the vehicle for Saddam’s rise to power and his grip on it. The honor meant higher pay for Wan in his job at a government printing plant.
.
But six years later, Saddam is gone, the Americans are here, and that reward, meant to ease Wan’s life, has ruined it.
.
Under a policy to “de-Ba’athify” Iraq imposed in May by L. Paul Bremer 3rd, the American administrator, public-sector employees in the party with a rank of group member or above have lost their jobs. Like many of his former colleagues, Wan, 51, is applying for an exemption. For now, he has no way to support his five children. Gaunt and unkempt, he goes to the printing plant and hangs around like a ghost.
.
The policy is one piece of the effort under way to “extirpate” – the word of Bremer’s choosing – the remnants of the old regime, and rid Iraq of an ideology that was born long before Saddam’s rule but became intertwined with it.
.
Saddam took over the party in the 1960’s and rode its slogan “One Arab Nation With an Eternal Message” and its principles of unity, freedom and socialism for more than three decades. Much like the Nazis and the Communists of Eastern Europe, the Ba’ath Party came to play a central role in disseminating propaganda, stifling dissent and ensuring that neighbors and colleagues policed one another’s behavior, speech and thought.

Of course, unlike after WWII, Bremer must do battle with not only the remnants of the deposed regime, but he must also fight the NY Times and the BBC.