Side Show

 Ali Al Massedy, who videoed Saddam’s hanging, said, “I saw fear. He was afraid.”

Do you see it?
Yes. Of course. It’s not terror, not dread. Fear is exactly what it is. And yes, fool that I am, I do feel compassion.

He is numb. He is fighting to contain his bowels. He is aware of the air passing through his nostrils. His testicals have drawn up into his body. The corners of his mouth pull down. Time is slow, but there is so little of it. The rope of the noose scrapes his ear as it passes over his head -- it is rough, and it roars like the end of the world.

The platform gives out under him.

He dies instantly. His body twitches.

When the execution was over and the witnesses had returned to the Green Zone, they were met with cheers. Massedy stated, "All Iraqis will be happy from the north to the south to the east to the west."

They have a right to rejoice. It means something to them. Saddam was responsible for the deaths of one and a half million people. Every Iraqi will have known someone who was raped or tortured or killed. Compassion for Saddam would be taken by them as a profound moral corruption. Ding dong, the witch is dead. But the east has many witches.

He was clutching a Koran. You can’t see that. Its comfort can only have been emotional. There was no spiritual relief. We know this because of his final words. "He was saying things about injustice, about resistance, about how these guys are terrorists."

A blustering fool, then. A bitter old man stupid with indignation. On December 13, 2003, when he was pulled out of the pit he was hiding in, the first thing he told his captors was: "I am Saddam Hussein. I am the president of Iraq and I am willing to negotiate." Yesterday in the looming presence of the gallows he said: “Iraq without me is nothing.” Perhaps those were his last words. The reality was that Saddam, without Iraq, was nothing.

He died an unrepentant fool, too possessed by arrogance and narcissism to meet death with even a shred of real dignity. He had only the dignity of contained fear.



J

Rope

Saddam was executed today. 

I heard it on the radio. The Shiites are firing celebratory rounds into the air. The Sunnis are exploding themselves in marketplaces. The Kurds are going about their business, building a free and just society. The lefties are clucking their tongues and saying Saddam was murdered. Really. I heard it with my own ears.  The rightwing fascist bloodthirsty monster bigots, such as myself, feel no need to have an emotion. Justice is satisfying only sometimes. Frequently it is just ugly.

I take no pleasure in the destruction of human life. The pleasure that I might take can only be in the balancing of the scales. It is an abstract, but I live much more in the world of ideas than of practicalities -- despite all my usual protestations to the contrary. We cannot escape our temperaments, any more than we can escape our fate.

Saddam has gone down to the dust, and further, to Hell. Good. But that "good" is not an emotion. It is the successful outworking of an equation. As I have elsewhere said, justice is an appropriate and equal response. Take a life unjustly, lose your life. That seems like perfect justice. 

Other cases, such as rape, seem more problematic. Rape, and be raped? I expect that would involve some variation of sodomy, which is not an equal response, for all that it may be appropriate. Rape, and be castrated? Rape, and be stoned? Rape, and be forced to marry the woman? You see the problem. But the death penalty is ideal.

As for Hell, one might wonder how eternal torment is an appropriate response for finite wrongdoing. There are lots of ways to answer that. I'll keep it simple. Some people have garbage for souls, and they belong in the garbage heap. The suffering isn't environmental, it's existential. They are made for the fire. That brings into question the nature of a God who would create souls only that they might go to Hell. The short answer is that, per the biblical tradition, that is just the case, and if you don't like it, you don't like reality. 

And keep in mind that the only sense of justice that we can have, is the one that God made us to have. The longer answer is that everyone does indeed have free will, and some people use that freedom always to rebel and never to repent. Their condemnation is as complete as their rebellion. Infinite.

What does this have to do with Saddam and his execution? He's just another example of what's wrong with humanity. He had power, and he used it only to glorify himself. Whatever theology you might happen to subscribe to, you can see how wrong that is. Power is a responsibility. Whatever our complaint with God is about the corruption of this world, there is a more visible cause of pain. 

Leaders must be accountable. If they do not lead in a democratic manner, then only rougher justice can set things right. The danger to an absolute ruler is that his reign can be abbreviated only in disgrace. Once off the world stage as an actor, he must become a pathetic freak or a pitiful watchword. In this instance, disgrace was consummated in death.

Today, one of the former princes of the world has taken his final fall. It was short, with a sudden stop. The process of justice was long, but its end will have lasted the breadth of a heartbeat. Then silence.


J