A parlour game

I’ve just thought up a new parlour game. I think I’ll call it Façades.

The rules are very simple. You have to imagine that you are dumped in Iraq c.1975. All you have to do is to survive until liberation. The person who comes up with the best strategy is the winner.

So what’s your strategy? Perhaps you want to escape. Possibly. Chances are that you would die in the desert or get shot but you never know.

Perhaps you should try to lead a blameless life. But that might attract the suspicion of the security forces. And if you’re not out there condemning your neighbour the chances are that he’ll be condemning you.

You could try becoming a doctor and although your chances of survival would be high, so would the chances of having to cut off the ears of deserters.

So, what are you going to do? What’s your vice going to be? How are you going to make yourself indispensable to a regime that will dispense of anyone? Perhaps you should join the secret police or the Ba’ath Party itself. Perhaps you should try to make yourself useful to Saddam. Perhaps the best strategy of all is to become Saddam’s token Christian Deputy Prime Minister.

I ask because Boris Johnson’s condemnation of Tariq Aziz made me angry. Tariq Aziz may indeed not be the most savoury of characters but who in Iraq was under Saddam? That’s the thing about tyrannies – they turn everyone into a criminal. Leading the virtuous life becomes impossible. I find it very hard to condemn those who did what they had to to survive. It was an achievement in itself.