US Iraqis: a will to oust Hussein

The largest American concentrations of Iraqis are in Detroit, Chicago, and here, and most expatriates run small businesses, from restaurants to car washes. From this club, to the Babylon Barber shop across the street to the Shish Kabob restaurant, American flags wave prominently.

"If Saddam fell tonight, you would see over 90 percent of my Iraqi colleagues stay here in America," says Barno. "We feel we are American as much as Iraqi." His office, blocks away, is adorned with both a US flag and a 9/11 remembrance plaque with the Twin Towers still standing. "I feel as patriotic as anyone here in America about what a great country this is," he says.

Though experts say the great majority of expatriates agree about ousting Hussein and creating some sort of democratic republic, many remain fearful of saying so.

Iraqi expatriates "are largely people who left Iraq under undesirable or intolerable circumstances and have relatives still there who continue to experience an extremely repressive society," says Ben Schiff, who teaches Middle East politics at Oberlin College. "They are extremely resentful of the Hussein regime but are understandably careful of how and when they say so."

Like Barno, most have stories of repression - from jail time in Iraq to relatives who have disappeared - that led them to move to America.

"I wrote in one of my columns that Iraq ought to be a democracy, and the Baaths [the ruling party] put me in jail for a year," says Sabah Sadik, a Chaldean who wrote for a Kurdish newspaper before fleeing.

"It's so very odd that even when Iraqis visit here from the homeland, they whisper when talking about the regime as if someone could be listening," says Barno. "They have seen friends disappear just for having a cigarette with someone who is a known critic of Saddam."

Most speak of the ouster of the Iraqi dictator in casual terms, as if the deed is done. But if they are cautious about their open predictions of Hussein's downfall - and their jubilation - they openly challenge media predictions that a post-Hussein Iraq will be in danger of collapse.

"That is a nasty bit of propaganda that Hussein has spent billions planting," says Labib Sultan, a professor of engineering at San Diego State University. "We do not have ethnic and religious strife in Iraq. Saddam brought the strife."

Of course, other experts warn of a gulf between immigrant sentiment and the mood in Iraq. "The view of expatriate Iraqis cannot be considered as a representative sample of Iraqi opinion of Saddam," says S. Azmat Hassan, adjunct professor of diplomacy and international relations at Seton Hall University. "The removal of Saddam may leave his diehard supporters as a problem for the new Iraqi regime."

But here in El Cajon, too, Iraqi Americans admit to fear of short-term political wrangling. Most say they'd prefer a temporary US presence to maintain stability.

In recent years, Mr. Sultan and other Iraqi intellectuals have formed the Civil Campaign for the Rights of Iraqis to establish principles of government. The group is seeking support from Washington.

"We don't have political parties which have been able to exercise and compete within a democracy," says Sultan. "That is the biggest problem we face."

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