THE SPINE DECEMBER 30, 2006
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Eve Fairbanks' tough-minded Plank post expects too much of the race: "While Saddam won't be laid to rest with the mixed feelings that accompanied Pinochet's death..." Alas, there will be more mixed feelings than Eve anticipates. More important, there will also be--there already is--enormous sorrow and wailing for the probably the cruelest tyrant in the postwar world, barring (but only possibly) Pol Pot. Much of the Arab world actually took Saddam to its heart, in Jordan, for example, where the late and noble King Hussein somehow felt he had to be in the dictator's court. Actually, there's no mystery as to why a truly civilized man like him found himself where he was. First of all, his great uncle was the monarch who had sat on the throne of modern Iraq. And the Hashemite house still had restorationist dreams. Second of all, he had much to fear in Syria and Assad for which and for whom Saddam had little patience and less love. Third, and most important, the majority of the Jordanian population is Palestinian. And Palestinians who do not appreciate that Jordan is the one country in the region to have given them citizenship and very broad rights, except the right to be treasonous. Since the tyrant's execution there has already been much ululating, Allahu Akbar, for his, well, it is a soul of a sort.
The same is true in what will some day be a state of Palestine. In fact, in the West Bank and Gaza, there was apparently deep mourning for Saddam. He and Arafat were the only heroes the Palestinians had, and now they are both in their graves. It is true that, for every shahid, every martyr who was killed, Saddam paid the family $25,000 or, more accurately, paid the family off at a rate of $25,000 per death. If you were a suicide bomber, that's the sum your kin received. If you were only a fighter with a gun, your family got only $10,000. Apparently, you need some kind of cash incentive to want to murder yourself while you murder Jews.
An Israeli Arab member of Knesset, Ahmed Tibi, said that the hanging of Saddam was "sadistic." It's a curious word that Tibi used. For Saddam Hussein's sadism was so systematic and so individualized, so fiendish and so ferocious that having him hanging from a noose seems somehow civilized.
And now the legend has been spread that the mass murderer's last words were "Palestine will be Arab." Is that not a threat--or promise--of mass murder?
6 comments
Some of you do not seem to be sufficiently cynical. Many of these so-called mourners are actually afraid of publicly expressing any other sort of emotion. In the back of their minds, they are asking themselves: "Is Saddam really dead? Could this be some sort of con game? Let's wait a few more days to make sure." It is very unfortunate that the legal proceedings took so damn long. Alas, the world would have been better off if one of the soldiers during Saddam's arrest "accidentally" pulled the trigger. Such an action may have saved thousands of lives. Lastly, didn't we use to hear how secular Saddam was? The dude was supposedly a Baathist who had little use for religion? Gosh, it sure seems like he may have had some sort of conversion in the last hours of his life.
- thomsondavid
December 30, 2006 at 8:37pm
I would also everyone not to take so seriously the crocodile tears of our self hating Western "elites." These folks could care less if a Pinochet or a Franco received a death sentence. In that case, they would consider it to be "regrettably appropriate." No, subconsciously these fools sense that Saddam's execution may very well benefit the Western world.
- thomsondavid
December 30, 2006 at 9:26pm
"I would also everyone not to..." Should read: I would also advise everyone not to...
- thomsondavid
December 30, 2006 at 9:28pm
"An Israeli Arab member of Knesset, Ahmed Tibi, said that the hanging of Saddam was "sadistic."" Here are some facts about Mr. Tibi: "Tibi was a close associate of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat . In 1993, he was appointed speical advisor to Arafat for the negotiations that preceded the Oslo Accords . After Arafat's death in November 2004, Tibi remarked that he saw the late Palestinian leader as a father figure." It seems as if Mr. Tibi is drawn to monomaniacal leaders who are themselves more than a little sadistic. Does Tibi ever think of Saddam's victims?
- jacksondyer
December 30, 2006 at 11:53pm
I think the death penalty is always a bad idea. I'd much rather see Saddam slowly going mad in a cage while the trials proceed with getting into evidence the entire catalog of his crimes. As it is, he was executed for one of the smallest and most-understandable of them, a reaction to an assassination attempt. Given Arab mentality, Saddam the Martyr is much more problematic for our interests than Saddam the Caged Nutbag.
- Robert Powell
December 31, 2006 at 3:34am
What will Saddam's death do for the liberals and democrats of Iraq? Not much, if anything. The fighting, I need hardly remind people, is largely composed of religious extremists at war with each other, and with us. If the (secular) Baathists were to disappear this instant, we would not be any closer to the democratic Iraq we all hope for. Marty needs to separate those who disagreed with executing Saddam into two camps -- his regime's apologists, and those of us who simply disagreed with the use of the death penalty, not his removal from power.
- Tjss
December 31, 2006 at 2:46pm