More on The Execution
– The AP is reporting that, in contrast to the State Department and the military, the White House is refusing to criticize the disgusting conduct of the execution. Yet more abdication of responsibility from the masters of it.
– Meanwhile, according to the Post, the guard who recorded the execution on his cellphone has been arrested by Iraqi authorities. This is the gruesome video that has been circulating around the Internet in recent days. But the problem with the execution wasn’t that it was recorded but that it was conducted as it was, as an act of sectarian vengeance with Shiite guards and taunting of the condemned.
– AMERICAblog: “By now it’s clear to everyone not living in a cave that the Saddam execution was a botched, amateurish debacle… Virtually everything that could have been screwed up, was. And now, against virtually all odds, Saddam managed to look good by dying and the Iraqi and U.S. governments are scrambling to do damage control in the face of massive Sunni demonstrations, international condemnation, and the general disgust of pretty much everyone who knows anything about Iraq.”
– Brokaw to Imus (from Crooks and Liars): It all went badly wrong. “And then to say that we are going to install in Iraq a judicial system and a democratic form of government and have something that resembled the worst kind of nightmare out of the old American West.”
– One of the best analyses of Saddam’s execution comes from Nir Rosen (via Steve Clemons). Make sure to read Nir’s post in full, but here’s a key passage: “The unofficial video of the execution, filmed on the mobile cell phone of one of the officials present is sure to further inflame sectarianism, because it is clearly a Shia execution… Predictably, there were celebrations in Shia areas.”
– In addition, another of the best analyses comes from Christopher Hitchens at Slate, who calls Saddam’s execution a lynching: “[F]ar from bringing anything like ‘closure,’ the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida’s dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame.” For shame, indeed. It was a grotesque case of vengeance enabled by the U.S. More: “In spite of his mad invective against ‘the Persians’ and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.” Yes, this whole episode has only served to make Saddam, a brutal tyrant, look good. That’s not easy to do, but the U.S. and its Iraqi puppets managed it quite well.
It was a gross act of injustice. And, like so much else in this horrible war, a bloody failure.
9 Responses to “More on The Execution”
Was anyone seriously expecting something different with the execution being handled by the Iraqi’s? This is how things get done in the middle east. If anyone can offer up an example of this being an exception and not the rule I’m more than willing to listen and learn.
As I’ve said before, and say again today over at Stubborn Facts, the Western reaction to Saddam’s execution is just immaterial. The execution wasn’t for our benefit, or we would have tried him. It was for the benefit of the Iraqis. While few people are reporting on it, it appears so far that the Iraqis just don’t have the same sensitivities as Westerners do when it comes to executions. They know exactly what a butcher he was, so they just don’t care that much about whether he was taunted a bit at the end.
Hitchens’ Slate article has this quote from George Orwell from an essay he wrote reporting on the post WW-II occupation in Germany:
“Properly speaking, there is no such thing as revenge.
Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are
powerless and because you are powerless: as soon as
the sense of impotence is removed, the desire evaporates
also.
Who would not have jumped for joy, in 1940, at the thought
of seeing S.S. officers kicked and humiliated? But when
the thing becomes possible, it is merely pathetic and
disgusting. It is said that when Mussolini’s corpse was
exhibited in public, an old woman drew a revolver and
fired five shots into it, exclaiming, “Those are for my
five sons!” It is the kind of story that the newspapers
make up, but it might be true. I wonder how much satis-
faction she got out of those five shots, which, doubtless,
she had dreamed years earlier of firing. The condition
of her being able to get near enough to Mussolini to shoot
at him was that he should be a corpse.”
Now U.S. soldiers are in the middle of this 1,500 year old Sunni v. Shiite conflict.
I’ve never heard that description of revenge before, but I really like it. Very apt.
As unlikely as it may seem at the time, the vanquished can indeed become powerful again. Central and South America are replete with tails of arrested, imprisoned conspirators who emerged from their captivity to lead new, more successful, coup attempts. Power can switch from one group to another with remarkable rapidity, in some circumstances.
Executing tyrants and despots is not merely justice but self-protection.
And if that lady who lost 5 sons feels better because she pumped 5 bullets into a lifeless corpse, I do not begrudge her that, nor do I condemn her for it.
PatHMV is correct, IMHO. This is a civil war, and the execution of enemies in time of war is pretty common. Executing tyrants is much safer than putting them in prison for ‘life’, though life sentences in most European countries are not really life, but more like 20 years.
The argument that this is making the west as bad as Hussein is, I think spurious. The execution of a dictator and a small number of his highest ranking officials is vastly different from the large scale killing of non-combatants, civilians, etc. How many thousands did Hussein and his regime kill? His death is both justice, and a means of keeping him from getting out of prison and killing more folks, though apparently that conecpt is much more obvious to many Iraqis than it is to many western intellectuals.
Before hearing more calls for the West to intervene in Darfur, or any other genocital situations, perhaps we should all consider how poorly the US has fared in its attempts to bring western democractic values and governance to most of the places where it has tried to do this through military means. How do people think we can force people who are killing each other to stop and make nice? This is a war, and ultimately, one side or the other will need to win. Likewise, it might be worthwhile for the western intellectual community to ask itself why abortion on demand is acceptible, but the societal equivilant of abortion, the execution of killers and tyrants, is not acceptible. Sorry, but justice involves both retribution and rehabilitation, or it is not complete. Some persons can be rehabilitated and pose no threat to others. Some cannot be, and should not be allowed to prey on others ever again. Mr. Hussein in in the latter category. It seems to me that no one has addressed this as nicely as Mark Twain in _Tom Sawyer_, where he noted that there was an outpouring of mis-directed sympathy for the killer, Injun Joe, and folks who didn’t want him to hang. Twan was correct – those folks were misguided. Justice is served by keeping killers from having an opportunity to ever kill again, and for surrendering their lives as partial payment for the life they have taken. You may not subscribe to that concept of justice, but I think that it is distinctly possible that a majority to the ordinary people in the world do accept the death penalty as a just punishment.
Re “It was a gross act of injustice” – that’s bunk. A murder was hanged. Where is the injustice in that?
I say you’re just piling on.
PatHMV I find it ironic that you (properly) say that the focus should be on the message that the Iraqi people get out of it while ignoring what that actual message is. As it’s been pointed out many places:
Saddam killed hundreds of thousands but was convicted and killed for a specific crime against
Er my post didn’t take for some reason.
Anyway the gist of it was that symbolically every single step — from selection of the crimes to try him for to the timing of the execution to the government officials that signed off on it to the people in the room — was a big F-you to Sunnis and Kurds. It was completely political message and nearly every single Iraqi I’ve read has pointed this out.