the title of the article means, in general, someone who acts or commits a crime against others, without being shrouded in any sense of remorse or guilt. this comes from someone who does not care about the consequences of his actions or who acts with a dead feeling, with the full awareness that what he is doing is criminal.
the judges usually increase the punishment for those who commit major crimes, if they do not find remorse for what they have done, and this hardness of heart is an indication of the criminal’s willingness to re-commit his crime again if the same circumstances are available to him!
the iraqi poet “sami mahdi” died some time ago (1940-2022) and five years before his death he published a book entitled “a poet in a life … memories and spectra”, which included a lot about his biography!
the book included a large part of his biography. mahdi joined the ba’ath party following the coup of 1986 when he was in his early 20s. he has worked at multiple media and cultural institutions. mahdi occupied the positions of director general of culture, director general of tv and radio, and editor-in-chief of al-jumhuriya newspaper, althawra newspaper, alif baa magazine, al-aqlam magazine, and al-muthaqaf magazine. arab, and other positions. he also wrote for saddam his novel “the rise to ceyhan” in 1987.
during that time, he was drowned in the praise of saddam’s resurrection, and the creation of the legend of a savage being named saddam hussein.
professor abd al-jabbar al-rifai, in his criticism of mahdi’s biography, says that he will talk about his political stances that are not similar to his poems, and he is no exception in history. philosophers, writers, and poets like him were involved in defending repressive regimes, including the famous philosopher francis bacon “1561-1626” who was a close friend of the earl of essex, and then had to betray him and cause the execution of his benefactor.
mahdi, with what he left of a great literary legacy, could have been something, but they all became worthless in front of the editorials of the newspapers because of false glory, and the speeches praising the vain. he retreated early from the shore of poetic neutrality, and his talent did not diminish the persistence of saddam’s authority in torturing and killing, and got mingled in the dust of wars, the last queens of freedom towards the friendships of literature and culture.
al-rifai said that his enthusiasm to continue reading the biography began to fade as he delved into its pages, with the feeling that the writer was fooling the reader after he dropped from his personal history everything related to belonging to the baath party, his bitter years of rule, his failure to admit any mistake in his partisan life, and his disregard for any crime. his party committed it against his own people and other countries, slaughtered his comrades, and it is impossible to believe that he was not a witness to what happened.
another example of the death of conscience is the other iraqi politician, naji sabri al-hadithi, the editor-in-chief of al-thawra newspaper, the academic, the “intellectual” ambassador, the founder of newspapers, the owner of a translation house, the undersecretary of the ministry of culture and the last minister of foreign affairs with the fall of saddam’s regime, was a witness to crimes of saddam when he had already killed one of his brothers, and imprisoned and tortured his other brother.
a former distinguished kuwaiti ambassador told me that he met him for dinner, and found that he still glorified saddam, even when he was hosted by a gulf state, without respecting our feelings. and how the loss of guilt dwells in his heart.
anyone who follows the interviews and trials of the saddam regime’s men discovers that almost none of them admitted their guilt, and even those who live safely abroad hesitated to do so!
the lack of a sense of guilt or acknowledgment of the truth often stems from partisan upbringing; in contrast to what the men of the dark stage themselves did, among their opponents, who did not hesitate to admit their mistakes.