“America needs wisdom, not force. It had used force, along with the West, to its extreme extent, only to find out later that it did not achieve what they wanted.”
Saddam Hussein.
"If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own filthy rope."
Saddam Hussein.
And so, at last he has gone....Hung from his own gallows at 6:07am on December 30th 2006. Watching the final moments of Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was an uncomfortable and almost surreal thing. He reminded me of a visiting foreign dignitary being shown around a public facility of some kind, attentive and serious. Here's the rope and here's the trapdoor. But he had the look of a brave and dignified man. Those around him, hooded and hungry for his death, taunting him from below and waving their mobile phone cameras, seemed more like criminals, murderers, terrorists or even pornographers, than Saddam Hussein did. There was an eerie calm about the 'Butcher of Baghdad' as he faced his imminent death in one of the abattoirs of his own making.
"I began my life as a militant and a rebel." He said. "And I have no fear of death!"
Could we picture any of our present world leaders accepting their fate with the same resolve and sense of political theatre? I doubt it. Putin, perhaps. Chirac, maybe. But Blair and Bush would never refuse the blindfold and judging by their foreign policy decisions they probably wouldn't need one anyway. They would piss themselves with fear and grovel all the way to the noose. But for a main player like Saddam Hussein, who had immersed himself in violence and terror from the very beginning, it was like visiting an old friend and ally. He was dressed for dinner and looked almost handsome or wise and utterly remorseless, haranguing his executioners, proud and unrepentant until the bitter end.
The man was undoubtedly a monster but by no stretch of the imagination can we believe that any moral high ground has been gained for the new Iraqi regime or for the Bush/Blair axis by carrying out this execution. The video footage of the moments before his hanging had the look and feel of a rape movie.
The response from the British government, who are opposed to capital punishment, was rather muted. They called the hanging an example of democracy at work in Iraq and generously gave all the credit to the Iraqi legal system. Even George Bush, who had effectively handed his father the bleeding and still beating heart of Saddam Hussein as Christmas present, was business like and sedate in his response. Three years ago there would have been fireworks over the White House but, despite the news flashes on American television, the President wasn't even woken to be told the news as he slept at his Texas ranch. Later that day, in a pre-prepared statement, he said that the execution was a 'milestone' on the road towards Iraqi democracy but also conceded that this execution changes nothing in Iraq for the majority of people who live there. Democracy in Iraq, it seems, is the right to kill, execute and murder.
Saddam is dead but there is still no security in Iraq. Rumours of death squads still persist but these are the new death squads of the democratically elected government. Prisoners are still tortured in Abu ghraib and at the headquarters of Iraqi police. Corpses, shot to death and mutilated are found hooded and dumped on the streets of Iraq every day. Car bombs and suicide attacks kill scores of innocent civilians every week...but the oil keeps pumping....MISSION ACCOMPLISHED...Compare the number of deaths in Iraq under Saddam Hussein with the number of men, women and children in that country who were squeezed to death by the siege of ten years of sanctions imposed by the western powers. Compare the victims of Saddam Hussein with the uncounted millions bombed and Napalmed and starved to death by the United States and her allies since the end of the second world war.
The US has persistently supported, trained and equipped brutal dictatorships around the world for decades. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was just one of them but there were many, many more. Augusto Pinochet, who really did deserve hanging, for example. Put into power by a CIA backed coup on September 11th 1973 that murdered Salvador Allande, the democratically elected leader of Chile, and supported by both the United States and the United Kingdom for 17 years. Surharto, Marcos, Ceausescu, the list goes on.
Henry Kissinger, who used to described himself as a 'swinger' and personally organised and sanctioned the coup in Chile, has been responsible, directly and indirectly, for more deaths and wholesale destruction than we could ever hold Saddam Hussein accountable for and for that he recieved the Nobel Peace prize. This is the hypocrisy that passes for foreign policy amongst the most powerful nations on earth.
Let's not forget that Saddam Hussein was once an ally of the west. Our Dictator. He was supported and equipped by the United States and Great Britain throughout the ten year Iran-Iraq war during which he used poison gas, that had been supplied by western laboratories, against the Iranians and the Kurds. Yet it was only when he attacked oil rich Kuwait, apparently with the permission of the United States, that he became a top ten enemy.
Throughout his twenty four years rule in Iraq he managed to unify a deeply divided country. He built roads and schools and began a series of state welfare and modernisation programs that brought electricity and fresh water to even the remotest rural communities. His government also introduced free education for all Iraqis and addressed the huge problem of Iraqi illiteracy with great success. He created one of the most modernised public health systems in the Middle East which earned him an award from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
His regime was one of the very few secular and modern regimes in the entire region. His Pan-Arabic brand of Ba'thist socialism was a sworn enemy of the religious fundamentalism that had taken root in most other Arabian countries.
Politics is always about expediency and Saddam Hussein, who had been such useful asset for the west for so long, had just ceased to serve any useful purpose. He became an obstacle standing between Iraqi oil and it's expropriation by western oil interests. He didn't fit into the new geopolitical world view of the Washington Neocons and their Project for the New American Century.
In death Saddam Hussein has become an online phenomenon. Footage of his execution is widely available on the web and is drawing more and more hits as each day passes. There seems to be a prevalent attitude that because it's Saddam Hussein being executed it's somehow okay to watch but if it was video footage of even an unnamed dog being hung there would be a public outcry. Perhaps we should have no sympathy for him at all but, regardless of what he represented and the terrible things he did or ordered to be done, he was still a human being and as such he deserves at least a little dignity in death, otherwise we have become as heartless and ruthless as our so called 'enemies' and our fight becomes even more pointless than perhaps it already is...
