etee's Blog

Last night, as I was watching the TV, I got word that Saddam Hussein had been executed. I considered blogging my thoughts at the time, but thought better of it: I have found that it is preferable to think about what one is going to say, and leave folks wondering if you are an idiot, then to speak up without thinking and remove all doubt.

So, here I am this morning, having organized my thoughts a bit, my stance on his execution can be summed up in three words:

To start off with: while I am an opponent of capital punishment, the reasons for my opposition have a lot to do with getting it wrong, and executing the wrong person -- after all, if a review of the evidence after the sentence is carried out shows the person to be innocent, there is no way to un-execute them. In this regard, I have no issue with what happened to Saddam: if there was ever a case in which there could be not even a shadow of a doubt as to the defendant's guilt, this was it (OK, maybe along with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, Mussolini, Franco, Pol Pot...)

However, this does not necessarily mean we woke up safer this morning than we did yesterday. As Shaun Mullen wrote:

The man known as Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, responsible for three decades of brutality against his people, has been hanged. Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the 9/11 attacks that were a justification for toppling the Iraqi dictator, remains free.

No, we didn't get the wrong guy in the classic sense: but the guy we did get wasn't the one we really needed to get. Got that? So, as Polimom says, his execution is indeed an American irrelevancy.

However, while he may not have been the right guy for us, he most certainly was for the Iraqi people. After all, his 'crimes against humanity' were actions in which they were the victims, not us. More on that later.

Next on the list: some folks are surprised with how quickly the process was, from conviction to appeals to execution. I, not so much. 'Justice' in many parts of the world move a lot faster than the speed of molasses that we take for granted in the USofA, and again as there was no real question as to his guilt, why put off the inevitable?

And, last but not least: in the final analysis, despite what some folks may say, this was done "by the Iraqis, of the Iraqis, for the Iraqis." He was tried, convicted, sentenced, and executed under Iraqi law. The Iraqi people got the 'closure' (for what it's worth) that the people of Chile were denied when Pinochet died. For them, this wasn't irrelevant at all.

Sometimes, it just isn't all about US.