Saddam’s Execution

last updated 8 January 2015

'œHow does one say 'public relations disaster' in Arabic?' asked Neva Chonin in the San Francisco Chronicle. The recent hanging of Saddam Hussein should have been a solemn and pivotal moment in Iraq's history. Instead, the images and sound captured on a cell phone camera revealed his last moments as an embarrassing display of sectarian hatred and chaos. Looking like terrorists in their black ski masks, Saddam's guards taunted him with cries of 'œGod damn you' and 'œYou have killed us!' These weren't dispassionate executioners; chanting 'œMuqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada,' they betrayed themselves as adherents of Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite whose Mahdi Army is murdering Sunnis throughout the country. 'œThe only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene,' said Christopher Hitchens in Slate.com, 'œwas the father of all hangmen, Saddam himself.' Amid the mayhem, he spoke defiantly to his captors, and calmly prayed as the trapdoor was sprung. Afterward, his body was put on ghoulish display. This was not justice but a 'œlynching,' one in which the U.S., to its lasting discredit, took 'œa silent, shamefaced part.'

What a 'œbotched, unholy mess,' said Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post. Taking place on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the most sacred of Sunni holy days, the execution was carried out illegally, without the required signature of President Jalal Talabani on the death certificate. The haste was inexcusable too. Hussein was executed only for his 1982 killing of 148 Shiites in the village of Dujail. He died without the world hearing testimony about his gassing of the Kurds, his war against Iran, his invasion of Kuwait, or his decimation of the Marsh Arabs. You'd think that the death of a tyrant who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his countrymen would be 'œa feel-good moment,' said Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker. But even President Bush was forced to admit that he wished 'œthe proceedings had been done in a more dignified way.' In the end, the botched execution stood as a metaphor for the 'œoverall disaster of which it is part.'

Spare us the hand-wringing, said Claudia Rosett in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Saddam was 'œa totalitarian killer, a man who murdered his way to power and kept it at grotesque cost by working the levers of terror, torture, and war.' Yet his trial was fair, his incarceration humane, and his dispatch swift. Iraqis have done more than send one of the world's most dangerous men to a well-deserved place in hell, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. They've sent a clear signal to Sunnis clinging to the delusion that Saddam and his Baathist thugs could return to power. Saddam's demise will also reassure Shiites that it's safe 'œto compromise with Sunnis on the shape of their government.'