The Fall of Saddam in Slow Motion

The war in Iraq has been rumbling on for six years now, despite nobody really knowing what’s going on there. Saddam is long dead, and in a plot twist that was written precisely for this decade, his death was shown on YouTube. And apart from that, not a lot has actually happened.

World War 2 lasted for 6 years, and enough happened to make over a million movies. What has this war produced? Ross Kemp fannying about in a desert somewhere.

Of course, “things happening” in a war generally means “people dying”, but WW2 managed to spawn a sit-com, which, even though it was loose with the “sit” and rubbish with the “com”, managed to last for ten years. Allo Allo was nearly twice as long as the war it was set in!

My overriding memory of the war is the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad being pulled down. A hugely symbolic moment, representing the fall of an empire and the Americans rollin’ on in to take over town.

I happened to catch the start of the event on TV, which, in a typical twenty four hour rolling newsy way was hyped to death with all flashing graphics, scrolling text and thumping music. This was going to be big, so you should just NOT TURN OFF, because this will quite literally blow your bum off.

So I didn’t, I couldn’t risk it. I sat down to watch, and waited for something to happen. “This’ll be amazing”, I thought, and it’d be a memory that’d stick with me forever. When people in 30, 40 years time talked of the fall of Iraq, I could say I was there (at home) watching (on TV) and cheering (shouting at my flatmate about what was happening).

I’m not a demolitions expert, but I’ve thrown a fair few shoes in my time, so I know that as far as statue-toppling methods go, flinging footwear is fairly ineffective. That didn’t stop the Iraqis from giving it a go, and unsurprisingly, it didn’t really work.

After standing around for a few hours, someone dug out a ladder, which they used to climb the statue and, er, try and push it over. Hadn’t really got the hang of big things needing to be hit quite hard, had they? Out came a sledgehammer, but the fear of falling off and looking like a twat in front of the world meant the attacks on Saddam were a bit on the wet side.

Luckily for everyone, the Americans showed up and showed the Iraqis how it should be done, in their own hamfisted way (which is perhaps representative of the entire war, but probably not. Satire’s not really my thing.) Using a crane, they managed to launch the thing over, but as you can imagine, comandeering a crane in the desert is even harder than finding a ladder. Mostly they stood around watching while whover was presenting News 24 breathlessly explained that we were watching history in the making.

History in slow motion, the Iraqi equivalent of a handful of builders stood around a hole looking puzzled and scratching their heads. A beautiful moment showing we’re all the same, basically clueless idiots faced with problems far bigger than we could even consider coping with. Until some Americans turn up with a crane. Which is a metaphor for something. Probably.