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Senior Statesman. In a part of the world where the old Ottoman title of Pasha is still popularly bestowed on all sorts of generals and paladins, Iraqis mean only one man when they speak of "The Pasha." His countrymen fear, respect, or stand in awe of Nuri; they do not love him, and though he has been managing their country's affairs since before most of them were born, few Iraqis know him as a human being. He rules them as a dictator, with an indifference to their opinion that verges on contempt.
Hunched over his dusty, paper-piled desk, with his big ears and jet-black bushy brows, Nuri looks like a grizzled old bear. He is ponderous of movement, quickly bored, and constitutionally unwilling to make a show of interest for politeness' sake. He dismisses an aide's idea with a casual wave of the hand that says, "You're a good boy but don't bother me with such nonsense." Worldly, infinitely experienced, he carries himself with the air of one who knows precisely where all the levers of power in his country are located, and therefore sees no point in explaining or persuading.
Not even the Egyptian embassy questions the Pasha's honesty. Syrian and Egyptian broadcasters have shouted "Traitor" and "Satan," denounced him as a stooge of the British and an Ottoman-style tyrant. He pays no heed. Every Iraqi knows how a half-century ago Nuri leagued with the Arab Patriot Jafar al-Askari to conspire against the Ottoman Turks, then fought on camelback for Emir Feisal in World War I's revolt in the Arabian desert.
"With the Resources Available." The greatest influence on his life, says Nuri, was a German colonel named Von Lossow, under whom he studied in Constantinople as a young Turkish army officer before World War I. During a classroom exercise one group of students was assigned to defend a fortified village, another to attack it. The student assigned to command the defenders announced that the town's fortifications were so out of date that it could never be defended, and that he was accordingly withdrawing to find a better place to fight.
Says Nuri: "The colonel stopped the exercise then and there and lectured us for 2 ½ hours. He said that fortifications are always out of date. Even if you fortify a town today with the most modern methods, he said, it will be out of date tomorrow because of new weapons and tactics. He told us that the right spirit for a commander is to do the job with the resources he has available. It's his duty to use his brain and energy with what's at hand, even if the town falls in half an hour, and afterwards he is court-martialed and shot.
"That," says Nuri in his gravelly baritone, "gave me the idea I have followed all my life—to be practical, not idealistic. My critics always want the ideal. If everything comes as you like it, what's the use of ability? This is my doctrine: never be an idealist, use what's available, don't wait till everything is perfect and miss your chance."