Saddam

I include the Faithful Progressive's thoughts below because they are quite good. When I heard about the execution, I felt sadness. Certainly not for Saddam, though the thought of executions leaves me cold. Certainly, if anyone deserved it, he did. But ultimately, I felt the sadness of the lie that violence can stop violence. The bumper sticker on my truck is the Ghandi quote, "And eye for an eye and soon the whole world is blind."

I am not naive. I understand that wars happen, and as my niece pointed out over the weekend, world peace is a pipe dream. But I prefer to believe that moving toward that ideal is a good goal.

His death will not make the world any safer nor will it make it any better. He was an evil man, I don't doubt, and I feel for the victims of his capricious and vicious tyranny. But his execution will not undo any of the tragedy.

Marty notes this post by Baghdad Burning on the event. Worth a look, if you are interested in a view from someone in Iraq.

Faithful Progressive's take:

Saddam Hussein has apparently been executed. Hard to feel much joy or remorse over this turn of events. If anyone ever deserved to die brutally by hanging, Saddam was the one. His evil spirit towered over Iraq like the enormous statues that testified to his delusional fantasies of his place in his history, his seemingly limitless and cruel meglomania.

While it is easy to remember his many crimes, it is also important to remember US complicity in some of his greatest acts of evil. President Ronald Reagan supported the bloody invasion of Iran with both intelligence and economic aid. Later, the first President Bush and General Schwarzkopf allowed Iraq to fly helicopters that enabled Saddam "to massacre thousands of largely unarmed Kurds and Shi'ites."

Though he goes farther than I would in calling the Bush Administration war criminals, Robert Fisk makes an important point here: Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.

There will be no trials other than the judgement of history on the greatest crimes of Saddam Hussein and those who aided and enabled him. And this is no accident.

If anyone deserves to die this brutal death, it is this man who sent so many others to similar deaths. But as one who professes to be a Christian, I would leave such judgements to God.