Malicious Dictators: Macbeth and Saddam Hussein

Rising to power can have two outcomes, the first outcome is the leader can be filled with well being for the community, support the policies that are bestowed upon them, and needs to find the best result for whatever decision they choose to make. The second outcome is the leader is filled with hatred and the desire for deception. They don’t care what’s best for the community, they only care about how much power and money they can always grasp in the end. They don’t care about what the policies that the people want, but to only keep the good-minded citizens quiet and obedient at all time, and if not, silenced with a cruel and unusual punishment.

Usually, when it comes to a horrible and corrupted leader, they always think that they can get away with their crimes. They have power in the grasp of their hands, they can finally manipulate and change anything that they desire to. It does not change the reality of how power corrupts if it was a king in a fictional story by William Shakespeare, or how a dictator from the country of Iraq was evil and cruel to his people for the majority of his dictatorship. Macbeth and Saddam Hussein were both malicious dictators that committed heinous crimes against people or characters while in power.

There is only one reason for their horrendous crimes, and that’s to always grasp on to their power, make sure that no one questions their authority, silence any opposers who question them on their crimes and neglect any consequences of their cruel actions. Macbeth in the story is shown to be a weak-minded, simple manipulated man who was quickly corrupted by power. The witches gave Macbeth three prophecies in which he gave little to no heed to them and blatantly thought he would be invincible and could not find any real and more profound meaning to the prophecies and only saw what he wanted. He chose to not acknowledge all the warnings specified to him and was rapidly succumbing to corruption and the desire for more power. “Although Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are powerful in their corruption, they are unable to fight against nature forever. Their sick deeds, manifested in the land, came back to haunt them literally as well as figuratively, ultimately leading to their separate demises in the form of divine retribution. Macbeth in the story will be defeated by the forces of Malcolm, who has never been with a woman, and Macduff, who “was from his mother’s womb Untimely ripped”(5.10.15-16).”(inquiriesjournal)

Which in conclusion of the story does lead to his eventual downfall and predictable demise by Macduff’s sword, ending his long and violent rule in Scotland. His corruption could have been avoidable but swallowed his humanity and good conscious into a man who became vicious with immoral power. “Corruption is something that is motivated by greed and deception. It’s a very sinister personality that controls and destroys people’s lives and makes them the kind of person other people don’t want to associate with. When a person is in power, some situations occur when they can acquire anything, lying, bribing, coning, or stealing. With these in mind, anybody in power could become a powerful foe.”(schoolworkhelper)

However, Before Macbeth had committed any of these crimes throughout the story and was ultimately executed, he was introduced to the reader at the beginning of the story as the Thane of Glamis. And due to the Thane of Cawdor performing treasonous acts against Scotland, Macbeth reached this new level of power. His wife ultimately greedy, wanted her husband to go for more power. While both he and Lady Macbeth were under Duncan’s leadership. They so violently plotted against him and ultimately chose to kill him so Macbeth would become the new king of Scotland to avenge his and Lady Macbeth's bloodthirsty desire for power.

After Duncan was assassinated by Macbeth himself with a dagger, he was officially crowned as king of Scotland. Throughout the story, Macbeth commits multiple murders and slowly goes mad with power. Macbeth assigns three murderers to kill his best friend Banquo and his son out of jealousy and fear of Banquo's children becoming future kings one day. But he uses the excuse to validate his reasons for wanting his best friend and son dead by the fact that the three murderers don't like Banquo and that he and Fleance, Banquo's son, would make unfit kings and it would only harm the murderers again.

Macbeth assassinates Duncan, his good friend and the king of Scotland. Macbeth also has lady Macduff's castle seized and kills everyone in the castle including her, her children, and every servant and anyone in the house. “So in actual fact, Macbeth never gets away with anything. In reality, he already begins to ‘feel pain’ as soon as he chooses to murder Duncan. The considerable strain brought upon by the murder ultimately cripples him. It doesn’t matter if he never got caught by the law. It matters that he paid for his crime in the end. But the events leading up to his death were more agonizing than death itself.”(hubpages)

Although, Macbeth wasn’t the only corrupted leader who used his power for all the wrong reasons. Although in history, there have been many corrupted leaders who abuse their power just because they feel like they can abuse the system that they rule and change anything they desire. When a villainous or a leader whose soul at one point was a good and brilliant person, slowly beseeched and found that a taste of power wasnt enough for them.“This is what’s striking when you bring people into the lab, and you randomly give them power. You say, “You’re in charge,” or in that case with the monopoly game, “You have more money,” or perhaps you get to evaluate other people and allocate rewards. Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical.”(PBS) They realize that with the new authority that they have just received, the sky’s the limit with what they can achieve or get away with. They can make changes and inflict their dark perspective on whoever they command, they have an experience as though they are untouchable. They demolish other individuals lives to gain additional power through physical intimidation or political blackmail.

While destroying other people’s lives by force or political blackmail, they become oversuspicious of everybody they come into contact with. They suffer mentally with the idea that everyone is deceitful and plotting against them even though they have no evidence to prove betrayal. With this in mind, they view it as a necessity to remove as much people as they possibly can so they can keep their place in power.“While most people value fair compensation for their accomplishments, few leaders start out seeking only money, power, and prestige. Along the way, the rewards—bonus checks, newspaper articles, perks, and stock appreciation—fuel increasing desires for more. This creates a deep desire to keep it going, often driven by desires to overcome narcissistic wounds from childhood.” (hbswk.hbs)

Furthermore, When a good or bad leader is faced with a new obstacle to leap over, some of them do make the right decisions. But, some leaders think that what they are doing is right. It’s the ignorance of the leader that makes them confident in doing something and thinking they are going to do right. Which can result in poor decision making and sometimes dangerous turnouts for everyone involved. Which can be argued for Macbeth, he believed in what he was doing was for the right reasons, but was ultimately defeated in the end because of his ignorance and poor decision making. “Pattern recognition is a complex process that integrates information from as many as 30 different parts of the brain. Faced with a new situation, we make assumptions based on prior experiences and judgments. Thus a chess master can assess a chess game and choose a high-quality move in as little as six seconds by drawing on patterns he or she has seen before. But pattern recognition can also mislead us. When we’re dealing with seemingly familiar situations, our brains can cause us to think we understand them when we don’t.” (hbr)

Good leaders can make poor decisions, that doesn’t make them an absolute evil person or a malicious leader. In spite of that, when a powerful leader is completely aware of their decisions that can murder thousands of people, rip apart and annihilate families because the parents opposed the dictators rule, and now the kids of those parents will never see them again, hear their voices again, be alone for someone else to take care of them. All of these miserable horrors came to light by one evil dictator that operated in Iraq. This corrupted disgusting excuse of a leader came to be known in the history books as Saddam Hussein.

He was responsible for all of these heinous crimes again his people. Additionally, he would silence anyone who dared opposed him at any time during his twenty four year rule. Also, his political opposers were either assassinated or arrested immediately after he took office. ” During the meeting, a list of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death. By early August 1979, hundreds of Saddam's political foes had been executed.” (Biology) Proving that, just like Macbeth, if anyone got in his way they would be executed for no reason other than that.Saddam would leave a path of destruction with numerous amount of bodies around him until no one was left standing in his way of the throne and his brutal destruction and chaos.

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