Who Really Hanged Saddam Hussein?
Posted on December 30, 2006
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I began hearing reports that Saddam Hussein would be executed this weekend just a day or so ago. Coupled with that information was speculation that there would be video, either in the mainstream press or on the internet. That such an event might be televised changed the execution from a bad idea to questioning what we humans have become. Within 12 more hours I heard from Katie Couric that Hussein had actually been hanged. I must say I’m not too upset that he’s dead. The means of his death and who it was that needed an execution raise far more challenging questions.
Do I have to qualify my remarks here with statements that he had done egregious harms—in his country, to the Kurds, and to the Iranians? Do I have to say he deserved the severest punishment or that the world is better without him before I can say what’s on my mind?
It’s a harsh enough thing when a government and it’s agents have to use violence to put down violence in the heat of the moment. Local, State, and U.S. forces forces are challenged to do what is necessary for the public’s and for their own safety. And when the violence is done, no matter how well-considered, there are recriminations.
Young women and men are put in a position where not only their lives but their futures are at stake, because of the vagaries of engagement and what must be done while relying on more primal survival skills as much as intellect. Mistakes are made. Who can judge any but the truly clear-cut cases?
So here, even from a somewhat pacifist orientation, I’m admitting that government may need to engage in violence, and the circumstance of that engagement has an extraordinary quality because of what leads to it and the unsettling outcomes that often follow.
I still have to raise the question some will think is too often raised. What business does the government have in killing when lives are no longer at stake? Who benefits from the death of Hussein? Certainly the risk to the U.S. is greater in killing him than it would be to let him wither away in isolation and obscurity. One can make the argument that he deserved to die. But one can also make the argument that he deserves to live knowing all that he has lost, how far he has fallen, and with the deaths and tortures he committed to haunt him for the remainder of his days. So why would the U.S. government kill Saddam Hussein?
Iraqis may feel desperate for some resolution. Surely there are a lot of tortured souls who were harmed by this man. Moreover, Iraqis are searching for the change or event that will begin to turn the tide that allows the current violence to settle down, and a peace to begin. Do they think the death of this man will be that event? I do wish them peace, but can’t see how this death will facilitate it.
I have no doubt that the aspect of feeling the need for revenge would motivate the Iraqis, but haven’t they had 3 years of cycles of revenge to show how little is resolved in yet another killing?
We Americans who have watched the war on HDTV bought with the tax breaks given us during the war — most of us had no bone with Hussein that we don’t have with any number of despots and abusers of human rights in the world. What message does it send if we, disconnected as we are, kill Hussein, abhorring his atrocities while ignoring those of others?
Should the families of American soldiers kill Saddam Hussein? Of course, they would do so through their government. The soldiers gave the most — many all they had to give — in removing him. But would our daughters and sons have even been in harm’s way had our government not picked the fight? (Remember, some of us still actually believe that Saddam Hussein was not a part of al Qaeda and did not participate in the attacks on New York and Washington, DC.)
He was a belligerent bastard, a criminal, a murderer…and a human being. You’ll never hear me argue that he should not have faced justice.
We have all these good people in our churches, in public office, and on Sunday morning talk shows who like to talk about zygotes in petri dishes and embryos in freezers, of biomedical research, and of Terri Schiavo. They love to talk about the sanctity of life. That is, that life itself, is sacred or holy. At what point in a man’s life is his life no longer holy? Can his actions negate sanctity, or does the sacred come from God? Why is is so hard to say we abhor a man’s behavior, but the spark of life in him, which comes from God, we can not take away? If we can say it to protect a cluster of cells in a petri dish, why not for a man — whatever the condition of his soul or of his karma?
So who hanged Saddam Hussein? Lots of us felt like doing it over the years, but we don’t all act out the violence we imagine in our hearts, thank God. No doubt “officials in Iraq” can diagram the hierarchies and chains of command that brought about the execution of his sentence. But that’s not what I’m talking about. We follow our chains of command and procedures when we believe needs dictate. I’ve named several groups who were around and who surely participated in bringing him to justice. Certainly we can get many different answers to the question of who is in power in Iraq. All these parties may have had reason to do the deed, but all had good reasons for restraint. The question remains.
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[…] It’s not always satisfying to be correct. Sometimes it can be damned aggravating. […]
[…] I tag “sanctity of life” in part because it is a catchphrase used by the Right, having to do with positions against abortion and an individual’s right to die with dignity. By doing so, I hope that a few people who toss around the phrase in that way will find my site and perhaps a few of those will read and get my meaning. I don’t think of it as co-opting their catchphrase, for me it is reclaiming its meaning. from an earlier post: We have all these good people in our churches, in public office, and on Sunday morning talk shows who like to talk about zygotes in petri dishes and embryos in freezers, of biomedical research, and of Terri Schiavo. They love to talk about the sanctity of life. That is, that life itself, is sacred or holy. At what point in a man’s life is his life no longer holy? Can his actions negate sanctity, or does the sacred come from God? Why is is so hard to say we abhor a man’s behavior, but the spark of life in him, which comes from God, we can not take away? If we can say it to protect a cluster of cells in a petri dish, why not for a man — whatever the condition of his soul or of his karma? […]
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