THE OLD DAYS, WHEN A VILLAIN WAS A VILLAIN

Rummaging around through some old news photographs the other day, I ran across a picture of Saddam Hussein. Boy, did it bring back memories.

There was a time when Saddam Hussein let this nation cast off a lot of hostility. His mustachioed likeness found its way onto dart boards, pistol targets and even toilet paper.

As leader of Iraq and would-be conqueror of Middle East nations that sit on a load of oil but lack the good sense to guard their borders, Saddam proved a delightful guy to hate.

Not often do you combine the qualities of a despotic, inept, corrupt fanatic and have them come off so perfectly spiteful. This guy was pure evil, but in a populist way.

What struck me about these memories, however, is that they were so immediately accessible. Then it struck me that I have a pair of tennis shoes I bought the week Iraq's army annexed Kuwait and the tennis shoes look fairly new.

OK, I have a short attention span even within the context of America, which is a nation of short attention spans. But it seems to me that we've run through a rather substantial lineup of terrorists, tyrants and global bullies since Saddam Hussein captured our fancy.

In the Andy Warhol perspective on geopolitical concerns, perhaps this as it should be: 15 minutes of international celebrity, worshipped by small bands of zealots who usually don't mind a little bloodshed to get a point across, and fretted over by nations who regard it their business to round up cutthroats.

Just when we hammered Saddam into submission, making his boys stop picking on the Kurds and cutting off their airspace, monstrous events began to make themselves known in Yugoslavia.

While certainly to his followers Slobodan Milosevic is something of a liberator, much of the world takes a dim view of butchery as practiced on other humans. And while slaughter continues in the former Yugoslavia, putting American leaders in a dither about what to do in response, it was only a matter of time before Milosevic (whose name was a bit difficult to get widespread scorn) and his actions moved off the front pages.

Alexander Rutskoi had even less luck in this regard, with a name that looks like a typo plus a political opponent, Boris Yeltsin, impatient enough to order in the artillery once the backtalk became tiresome. I got your coup right here, Yeltsin informed Rutskoi, and opened fire on the parliament building. The line between global infamy and small-time traitor is indeed thin.

In Somalia, where U.S. and U.N. relief efforts at first encountered little opposition, a guerrilla fighter named Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a home-cooked warlord, ultimately bumfuzzled the most sophisticated military force on the planet. A master of moving fortification, Aidid managed to elude elite American service personnel while still turning up on Ted Koppel's show and holding press conferences. His use of the suffering people of Somalia for personal aims of power is sufficient to classify him as a world-class villain.

Then, there is Haiti, where the only person who might be more despicable than self-imposed military ruler Raoul Cedras is the deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the United States embraces like kinfolk.

There seems to be no end of these sorts. And that doesn't even count the domestic fiends that distract us, from David Koresh to assorted serial killers to politically incorrect types to various senators who can't keep their hands off female parts.

Which brings us back to Iraq's annoying leader. Like Freddy Krueger, we never seem to see the end of the guy. Somewhere out there, Saddam Hussein is waiting to raise his rather unsightly visage, breaking some treaty, committing some atrocity or otherwise putting a burr under the American saddle, all the while appealing to his religious brethren to strike down the godless Westerners.

We allegedly sleep better these days knowing that the Cold War ended well, requisite walls falling and good guys prevailing. It is rightfully pointed out, however, that most, if not all, the nuclear weapons aimed at our nation before the Communist bloc buckled are still pointed our way. Only now, the people in charge of them are hungry and irritated by civil strife.

Terrific. This New World Order is perhaps ideal for those with short attention spans, with a villain every minute, but I'm not sure I wasn't more comfortable back in the old days, when the bad guys quoted Marx, wanted to annihilate us as opposed to picking us apart and were easier to identify.

Ken Newton is editor of the Southeast Missourian.