Back to Saddam
Much wailing to be heard across the airwaves following Saddam's execution. Shock and horror at the manner of his dispatch is widespread, especially in Italy, where they put Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, to death in April 1945 and then hung their bodies (upside-down) in Milan's Piazzale Loreto. Interestingly, the opponents of Saturday's hanging are largely silent about the fact that the same Saddam killed 70 to 125 people every day for the 8,000 days he governed Iraq. Bizarrely, his average of 20,000 civilian deaths a year was considered "peace". Go figure.
Anyway, our meditation on all this, which was half intended as a response to Gregor's comment yesterday, has been deferred because Rainy Day commentator Larry has stepped into the breech. He addresses the issues as follows:
So nice to be a Liberal and oppose political execution after a long, revealing and boring trial. Who wants to be reminded of mass killings and stinking graves?Protesting execution is a favourite pastime for Catholic nuns and Labour Party folks in Ireland and, indeed, all over. It works well if the person being executed is also a "man of the left," like Saddam Hussein. Poor Saddam. Misunderstood by the cultural differences in the West. He really meant well.
But where were these people when the Nazis and Japanese were hanged after WWII for similar "crimes against humanity"? Did they protest on moral principles the thousands of French citizens executed after WWII for "collaboration" after WW ended? Of course not.
Many of these same protesters were only last month bellowing for the execution of the arch villain Pinochet, only saved from public hanging by the hand of God. And Milosevic? Where were the protesters at his trial?
I'm not weeping for Saddam, nor for his two raping, murdering sons, killed "by the Americans." Fouad Ajami wrote succinctly in the Times on Sunday:
It will be said on the "Arab street" and by the critics of the Iraq war worldwide, that this verdict, and the entire judicial process that issued the death sentence, were an affair of the American occupation, cut to America's political needs. Iraqis from Kurdistan to Basra will pay these quibbles no heed.If it took a foreign war to bring about this justice, and to introduce into Arab politics the principle of political accountability, so be it.
So much of the political and economic life of the Arabs today — the satellite television channels railing against the West, the intellectuals who condemn the West in perfectly good western idiom, the oil industry that sustains practically all that plays out in the region — has its origins in western lands.
Nuremberg, too, was the victor's justice. The Iraqis who endured the tyranny while the world averted its gaze from their suffering are owed their moment of satisfaction.
Well said! And isn't it time those in the West who did everything in their power to allow Saddam to continue to wade in gore and oil — Fischer, Chirac, Putin, Galloway, the Oil-for-Food gang and their lapdogs in the Guardian, Le Monde and Der Spiegel — apologized to the people of Iraq who had to endure Saddam's "peace"? Or have they no shame?
Comments
For me, being against Saddam's execution naturally includes being against an execution of Pinochet and Milosevic. Thanks to human rights standards, their execution was never considered. Therefore I see Larry's statement not as a polemic point of view but as a personal insult.
I never denied Saddam's crimes, just as I never denied the crimes of Pinochet and Milosevic. So what should be done, Larry and Eamonn? Should you apologize and say: Every liberal except Gregor wanted the death of Pinochet and Milosevic and was against Saddam's execution? This would be a bit ridiculous, wouldn't it?
But why is this so? Because there are more people like me who don't think in terms of black and white...
And never forget: Unlike Donald Rumsfeld I never shook hands with Saddam.
Best
Gregor
Posted by: Gregor | January 3, 2007 11:12 PM
PS:
An article worth reading by an Iraqui in exile printed in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung today. Unfortunately in German
http://www.nzz.ch/2007/01/03/fe/articleESGI7.html
Posted by: Gregor | January 3, 2007 11:24 PM
The left has had its fair share of tyrants and psychopaths but to call Saddam a 'man of the left' boggles the mind. And besides, Eamonn, your old friend Christopher Hitchens has a few uncomplimentary things to say about the lynching the other day, and no lapdog of the late dictator is he. If you haven't been keeping up on develoments in the blogopshere, the text can be viewed here: http://www.slate.com/id/2156776/fr/rss/.
Posted by: Oliver Farry | January 4, 2007 12:43 AM
The online vids where a bit much.. But will it really change anything? who knows!
Posted by: ChaBoyo Randon Job hunter! | January 4, 2007 5:38 PM
Cheers for that, Gregor.
Every time I watch that clip of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Hussein (dunno why they keep referring to him as 'Saddam' - who'd want to be on firstname terms with such a tyrant?), it reminds me of the hypocracy of the whole thing. After 3,000 US military deaths, hundreds of thousands of Eye-racky deaths and the hanging of a despised dictator (the primitive hanging reminds one of the Wild West) - it stinks, as the Yanks would say. Sadly the likes of Pinochet and Milosevic missed their chances to get their hanging shown on Youtube...
Anyway, here's another chance to watch old acquaintances embrace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDABe8AOuCQ Yes, it stinks!
Funny how Eamo never gave Pinochet a mention recently as he lay on his deathbed.
As for the hanging of Hussein, what was the point? What good will it bring? Just another dead body in the endless flowing bloodbath of hell that is pathetic Eye-rack.
Posted by: Ted | January 4, 2007 9:13 PM
Saddam admired Stalin immensely (and we can all agree that it is not "mind-boggling" to call Stalin a leftist, can we not?) There is a chilling video of Saddam smilingly announcing the names of "traitors" to his terrified puppet government. The men he named were in the audience and were dragged out by police as soon as their names were read. After a few names were read, you can see the other government officals in the room sweating profusely as they wondered if their name would be called next. That's a page straight out of the Moscow Show trials of the 1930's.
What happened to those men? Well, Saddam (like Uncle Joe) had an offbeat sense of humor. Stalin liked inviting his victims to dinner, chatting pleasantly with them - and then having them arrested as soon as they left his dacha. One of Hussein's favorite jokes was to reassure his victims' wives that their husbands would be "returned to them" in a few days. They were after they had been hacked to pieces and stuffed in plastic bags.
Saddam died a far easier death than any of his victims. I wasn't gleeful over his death, but I believed it to be just.
Gregor: Since you are such a nuanced thinker, have you ever considered Rumsfeld's visit in its' historical context? I doubt very much Rummy actually thought Saddam was a great guy then. Yes, it was Cold War realpolitik - "he's a SOB but he's our SOB." The Left condemns America when it cuts deals with tyrants, but America also gets damned when it ousts tyrants. The only constant among the Left is hatred for whatever America does.
Gregor, plenty of people on the Left not only shook hands with Saddam, but kissed his posterior for years, just as they have done with Castro and Chavez.
Let's be honest - as soon as any tinpot, Third World butcher says those magic words "the People" and spouts anti-American venom, the Left immediately finds a warm spot in its' heart for him.
Posted by: Donna | January 5, 2007 4:41 AM