Soccer Dad

No atheists at the scaffold

In Deluded to the Last, Fouad Ajami notes the hypocrisy of the secular Baathist who used religious imagery only in times of trouble. (I guess that there are no atheists at the scaffold either.)

And though he argues that Saddam earned America's wrath somewhat by chance, he sees that his death is a good thing that will hopefully reshape the thinking of the Islamic world.

In retrospect, the scaffolding of the war would come under steady attack, and the critics would maintain that there had been no operational links between Saddam and Al-Qaeda. But those fine distinctions had no standing and no force in the countdown to war. It was Saddam’s fault that he drew attention, and fire, when ducking for cover would have been the better part of wisdom.

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.

Anne Applebaum also sees the good in Saddam's execution as it put Hussein in his place. She argues that the West's awakening to Saddam's evil was just as belated as it was to Hitler or Stalin, but in the end all of their overreaching brought the unwanted attention onto themselves.

Only after his invasion of Poland was Hitler considered a threat to the rest of Europe; only after his occupation of Central Europe was Stalin's internal terror taken seriously. Twentieth-century history has proved, again and again and again, that the ambitions of revolutionary, totalitarian leaders are rarely confined to their own countries. Yet only after he invaded Kuwait was Hussein, long a threat to his own people, perceived as anything worse than a local nuisance.

Belatedly, we identified him as a totalitarian dictator, but by then it was too late for our discovery to have much of an impact, in Iraq or anywhere else. In the Arab world, most assumed that America's overdue criticism represented yet another political calculation on the part of self-interested Americans, whose memories could not possibly be so short as they pretended.

According to Barry Rubin in The death of kings, Saddam's execution is important in how it is interpreted

Much will be written about Saddam's execution. What is most important? In the wider Middle East context, it is how Saddam is interpreted. To many, the great majority that accepts radical Arab nationalism and even lots of Islamists, Saddam is basically a hero. He fought America; he fought Israel; he (at least made believe) supported Arab causes.
If this is what prevails, then there is no hope for the Arabic-speaking world. For in that case, his mismanagement, wasteful wars, murder, torture, and intimidation are simply not important. And if these things do not matter, they will continue to be repeated and exalted.
Within Iraq itself, the key issue is whether Saddam will be seen as the greatest Sunni communal leader of modern times. Clearly, the Shia and Kurdish majority hates him and is glad that he is dead. If the Sunni minority--which he rewarded in many ways while treating terribly in others--wants a new Saddam-type figure (even if an Islamist) rather than conciliation, Iraq's civil war will be long and bloody.

In the hanging: beyond travesty ( or here), Charles Krauthammer worries that the Maliki government has done a lot of damage to Iraq by its sectarian handling of the trial and execution of Saddam and made Saddam the martyr.

Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later. However, Saddam will now never be tried for the Kurdish genocide, the decimation of the Marsh Arabs, the multiple war crimes and all the rest.

Finally, there was the motley crew -- handpicked by the government -- that constituted the hanging party. They turned what was an act of national justice into a scene of sectarian vengeance. The world has now seen the smuggled video of the shouting and taunting that turned Saddam into the most dignified figure in the room -- another remarkable achievement in burnishing the image of the most evil man of his time.

While I understand Krauthammer's concerns, it would seem that reconcilliation is still possible and that Saddam's death marks a positive step for post-war Iraq. But then I thought that the killing of Zarqawi would cripple the insurgency and I was clearly wrong about that.

UPDATE: Fellow Watcher American Future's views are quite similar to Krauthammer's. On the other hand another fellow watcher The Sundries Shack plays down the significance of Saddam's final moments.

UPDATE II: In Context analyzes the Krauthammer column.

Blogdigger tags: Saddam Hussein.