Only Obeying Orders

摘要

Why did so many apparently decent Iraqis serve Saddam Hussein so loyally for so many years? An American-British reporter, Wendell Steavenson, has interviewed a score or more of Iraqi soldiers, from sergeants to generals, trawling through their life histories to find an answer. In particular, she befriends the family of a brave general, Kamel Sachet Aziz al-Janabi, delving into his life story through his wife, several of his nine children and numerous friends and admirers.rnOnly later does the reader discover that he was one of countless Iraqis executed by Saddam, for reasons that never become clear, in his case only a few years before the Americans toppled the dictator. General Sachet emerges as a fundamentally honest and upright, though occasionally ruthless and intellectually limited, soldier who turns to religion, like so many other Iraqis, as the regime putrefies. His family is battered. Though its members have every cause to celebrate Saddam's demise, most of them sympathise with-and some of them actively support-the anti-American insurgency that was still rife as this book went to print.