David Brooks of The Review describes Saddam's position that "Someday there will be a great historical culmination [presumably between the Arab world and the United States]. Some nation, some people, will establish permanent dominance over the earth. It will realize all values, bring to culmination all hopes, and ascend to permanent glory." He further attributes to Saddam that "The ideology of Baathism calls for relentless struggle, ever-widening conflict, until some ideal culmination of history is achieved. The Baathist ideology makes all agreements arbitrary, just as it makes all legal standards arbitrary and all truth arbitrary." In the fanatical pursuit of the idea, or ideology, all actions become defensible and "all principles, even Baath principles, are relative" (Brooks 1). Arendt's observation on totalitarian states predicts this view of the ends justifying the means. According to Kohn, "Arendt saw that the "idea," the content, of the ideology matters less than its "inherent logicality" (Kohn 2). For the Nazis, pursuing the idea and its effect became focused on Jews and led to "a relentless and unstinting policy of genocide" (Magstadt 69). The foundation or goal of a totalitarian regime depends upon strict adherence to a cause or idea despite logical thoughts to the contrary. Since all actions can be justified by the "idea," the believer assumes that all manner of activities can logically be performed in its name. For Arendt, this explained Hitler's use of the camps as "laboratories" (Kohn, section 3, page 1) and explains Saddam's use of chemical and biological weapons against Iraqi civilians. After trying them on Iranian soldiers, Hussein killed six-thousand people in 1988. .
Arendt suggests that sticking to the idea becomes more important than any rational consequence of the idea. So consumed were they with the creation of a master race, that even when victory became impossible, "Hitler moved ahead (and even accelerated) the liquidation of the Jews" (Magstadt 69).
