Regarding the hanging of the monster Saddam
Rainy Day greeted the news of the hanging of Saddam Hussein with Hangman's Blues by Blind Lemon Jefferson, from a recording made in 1928 in Chicago. This prompted Gregor to post the following comment:
Dear Eamonn,Isn't this a very simplistic view on the execution of Saddam? Just a case of crime and (capital) punishment like we know it from the Old Testament or old blues bards? We all agree that Saddam is a criminal, a tyrant. From a practical and political point of view it was the most simple solution for the US and the Iraqi Government. Any other solution would have shown the complexities and the dilemma of the war in Iraq.
Saddam in prison in Iraq? Well, there are enough supporters who could free him! Saddam in an American prison? This would look as if the Iraqi government was a puppet of the US. A trial at an international court? — A clash of civilizations. Quite something... And we haven't even touched the discussion yet if capital punishment is a just measure to make someone pay for his crimes! — Probably not!
My 94-year-old father was very moved by the pictures of the execution on the news. He said: Capital punishment is no solution; they should have made him work. My dad had his share of totalitarianism in his life!
Of course we all love these old blues songs. They sound like ancient truth. They send shivers up our middle class spines. But they surely are no answer or piece of comment on the death of Saddam.
Best
Gregor
Thanks, Gregor. Excellent comment. Tomorrow, here, a response in the form of a meditation on freedom in which we accuse the "realists" of Europe of accommodating tyrants and praise George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the "idealists" who had the courage to rid the world of the monster Saddam and challenge the religious mafia now ruling Iran. As the victims of Nazism and Communism know, it was not European appeasement but Anglo-American determination that saved millions from slavery. And it will be no different tomorrow or the day after.
Comments
So nice to be a Liberal and oppose political execution, 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:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2524102,00.html
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.
Posted by: Larry | January 2, 2007 10:52 PM
So you think Iraq is a panacea now that Saddam's dead. Lest we forget, at the height of his powers, his biggest allies were the West.
Posted by: Al | October 21, 2007 7:06 PM