New at Reason

January 5, 2007

From his vantage point in Lebanon, Michael Young looks at the circumstances and possible ramifications of the Saddam execution.

Comments

|1.5.07 @ 11:59AM|#

Much offense was taken from the fact that in his final moments he had to endure the insults of onlookers. Something more solemn was apparently required, so the putting to death would look like a meaningful sacrifice rather than a squalid settling of scores. Near the end, someone in the room declared: "Long live Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr." It seemed suitable that that name would come up - the name of the founder of the Daawa party, whom Saddam had ordered murdered in spring 1980, along with his sister, the pious Bint al-Huda.

Um, no. You conveniently left out the part where people chanted "Moqtada! Moqtada!"

I don't give a shit if a bad guy endured some insults in his final moments. But if at an event conducted under tight security you've got guys openly declaring their loyalty to a militia leader who is alive and well, that is a problem. I don't care if Saddam had to hear those chants, but it was a revealing moment, where we saw just how far the reach of the militias extends.

You overlooked that point.

:-|1.5.07 @ 12:11PM|#

people chanted "Moqtada! Moqtada!"

No, they were chanting "Macaca! Macaca!"
That's why they won't be re-elected.

|1.5.07 @ 12:19PM|#

You know the old saying 'He couldn't score in a brothel' Well if the Iraqi government couldn't conduct a proper hanging at a gallows its a pretty damning indictment of said Iraqi government.

And yeah, Thoreau is right as well.

|1.5.07 @ 12:20PM|#

Michael Young can complain about the problems surrounding Saddam's execution, but no one else can. Particularly if they are Arab, and even if they are making exactly the same points as Mr. Young.

|1.5.07 @ 1:18PM|#

Of course, Mr Young also fails to mention that the silence about Saddam's regime extended to the US, Britain, France, and Germany, who eagerly backed him in his war against Iran. Even so far as discreetly referring to his gassing of the Kurds as "alleged" in news reports right up to the day when he deviated from the script and invaded Kuwait.

No matter: in Mr Young's world what REALLY kept Saddam going was not the hundreds of billions of dollars in loans, aid, and arms sales from the West that propped up his regime in the 80's but the moral support provided by impoverished Palestinian refugees. Once again, he unerringly skewers the wrong target.

|1.5.07 @ 1:23PM|#

Saddam Hussein's execution had 2 benefits not noted:

1) It made clear that he was dead and permanently out of the picture.

2) If he had been allowed to rot (and eventually die) in prison, there would have been endless conspiracy theories about his ultimate death similar to the theories surrounding the supposed 'poisoning' of Napoleon. [And, please, don't argue that one here. There have already been too many books and articles on the subject.]

|1.5.07 @ 1:54PM|#

Our interpreters seem really happy about the hanging.

I guess the hanging is one indication that the whole thing is not just a trick by the CIA who plan to bring the guy back to power in Iraq.

I wonder if this will cause the govt to try to crack down on the Muqtada militia. I think it kind of has to now.

|1.5.07 @ 2:00PM|#

it was a fitting finale for an aging despot who once dispatched tens of thousands of people in a like manner

Saddam was not executed for dispatching thousands of people. He was executed for killing 148 Shiite in Al-Dujail village after they tried to assissnate him. A group of people who were trained and supported by Iran, a country who was at war with Iraq at the time. Do you really blame him for this?

If you ask me, somebody wanted him dead before the dirty laundary of the Anfal campaign is exposed.

freehad|1.5.07 @ 2:30PM|#

I emigrated to the U.S. from Iraq in 1998,having lived under Saddam for many years. Prior to his cozy relationship with the U.S., he was more of a Mafia-thug type, rather than the genocidal dictator Mr. Young mistakenly portrays him as. He would occasionally go after a few enemies, but had no where near the type of despotic control of communist dictators. Prior to the Iran war, things were pretty good. While lacking the superficial trappings of democracy we have here, (where we can choose from a short list of money grubbing big spenders beholden to special interests) we had lots of freedom and prosperity. Mr. Young wants to believe that things were much worse, as he cannot admit that the U.S. intervention, while well-intentioned did more harm to Iraq than Saddam ever did. Saddam was always known as a brutal thug, but it was relatively easy to stay out of his way.

It was basically the U.S. that empowered him and turned him into a much more powerful dictator, unleashing him to kill tens of thousands in the war against Iran.

Most of my distant relations and friends in Bhagdad are killed or injured. The young children of my nieces in Basra are all sick from inhaling Depleted Uranium dust. Dr. Jawad-Al-Ali, an oncologist there, tells me that cancer is spiraling out of control, and there is not much left in the way of infrastructure for treatment.

Many of my friends in Iraq feel that Bush should have been hanged along with Saddam. He did a lot more damage a lot quicker than Saddam.

|1.6.07 @ 12:27AM|#

"Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq."