The Death of Saddam

Does this mean the troops can all come home tomorrow?

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
12/30/06
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

It would be easy to dismiss the execution of Saddam Hussein as just another fallen tyrant getting his just rewards. Nobody was surprised or even disturbed at the bloody death (by impromptu firing squad) of Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator. Most people would have liked to see a similar fate befall Pinochet, or Idi Amin, or any of the thousands of other despots who have contributed to the savagery and disgrace that is so often the human condition. Certainly there was no lack of blood on Saddam’s hands.

But there isn’t anything the Putsch junta can’t screw up, and even the trial and killing of this loathsome man shifted rapidly from justice to low farce.

Remember how, in the ramp-up to war, one of the biggest memes of Putsch’s far-right supporters was “Saddam gassed his own people”? Republican moral outrage, such as it is, focused on the attacks by Saddam on Kurdish villages. The Kurds were fighting for their freedom, and Saddam massacred them with mustard gas and other horrors.

So, once captured, one might think that the Americans would be pressing for a trial of Saddam for the gassing of the Kurds (who, incidently, never were very amused at being referred to as “Saddam’s own people.” Try calling a white southerner one of “Lincoln’s own people,” and I’m sure he’ll be happy to sort you out about that).

There was no trial regarding the Kurds. Seems that the monstrous weapons Saddam used against those people came from the United States, and the reason they rose up was that in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, then-President Bush assured the Kurds that if they rose up, they would have American support and backing. They rose up, Bush cravenly backed down, and Saddam slaughtered the Kurds.

The Kurds today are not amused that they never got a chance for justice in court. They learned that with Republicans, deep moral outrage has no more real meaning than a two-year old’s temper tantrum.

The trial was low comedy. The sixteeen Soviet citizens accused in 1936 of being part of the so-called “Trotskyite-Zinovievite Terrorist Centre,” the first of many Soviet show trials, might have recognized elements of Saddam’s trial, although they would have shaken their heads at the sheer incompetence of the stage direction. Even the Soviet trials were enough like actual trials to convince some Western observers at the time that the trials were fair. No such effort was made in the Saddam trial, which used up three judges (including one who was summarily fired for daring to suggest that unsupported allegation was not the same as a finding of guilt) and several teams of attorneys, many of whom were killed. Even the Soviets, if dissatisfied with the actors in the courtroom, would wait and given the actors their own show trials before murdering them.

A lot of people will say that Saddam deserved his fate. But nobody can say he got a fair trial, or that justice was served. And that leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many people.

This all occurred as Putsch ran around assuring Americans that he only wanted to bring democracy and freedom to Iraq. Nobody believed him, of course, save for the servile buffoons of the far right, but it’s absolutely shameful that the President of the United States would point to such a travesty of justice and declare that it showed America, once justly praised as a free nation of laws, was trying to bring the same to the Iraqi people. It reminds people that Putsch and the GOP simply don’t understand how important an independent and impartial judiciary is to a functioning democracy.

Then there was the matter of the execution. The administration assured one and all that it was “an Iraqi matter,” an internal affair that America had no role in.

But Saddam remained in American custody up until five minutes before he was hanged. He was hanged in the American “Green Zone.” The Americans explained that they were simply seeing to it that Saddam was not tortured or otherwise abused by vengeful Iraqi guards. While the reason is entirely plausible, it sort of puts a dent in American deniability as regards the execution itself.

The DA in the Saddam trial vowed immediately after the court turned down Saddam’s appeal that he would be hanged within days – “before the new year” is how he put it.

Odd. Muharram 1st, 1427 isn’t for another 32 days. Perhaps the DA had some other New Years’ Day in mind. Know of any that fall within ten days of the Winter Solstice?

One commentator noted that if the admin really wanted to milk the Saddam execution, it would have arranged for the hanging to fall on a date when a distraction would be in order, such as when the 110th Congress convenes next week, or immediately before the SOTU, when Putsch could glory in vanquishing his foe.

Except, as noted, the administration isn’t going to get any political mileage out of this. Too many people will simply say, “OK, George. You got what you came for. You killed Daddy’s nemesis and proved your dick is bigger than Daddy’s. Does this mean you can bring the troops home now?”

Instead, the timing of the execution was poorly thought out. It happened on the Day of the Feast of Sacrifice, commemorating Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac to God (Eid al-Adha). The Sunnis celebrate it on the day Saddam was executed. The Shi’ites, in one of those endless minute theological distinctions with which religion enriches our lives, celebrate it four days later. So the Americans managed to insult the Sunnis once again.

Oh, and the hanging took place during Morning Call to Prayer, which, falling as it did on Adha, is known as a special morning prayer, Eid salat. It means that the execution was timed for when the Sunnis had a particularly holy duty to be praying instead, and contemplating sacrifice to Allah.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Saddam himself complicated matters by refusing to wear a hood. This ensures his hanging will not be shown on American television, since Republicans confuse personal squeamishness with natural laws of the universe, and his action calls into doubt the stories that Saddam was faint from fear, begging for his life, and all the other claims that, under the circumstances, are dubious.

Nobody is going to shed a tear for Saddam. He was a vile man who hurt and killed millions of people.

But if Putsch and his cabal hoped to score any propaganda points from his execution they were, once again, defeated by their own heavy-handed and insensitive incompetence.