Saddam's Execution

The execution of Saddam Hussein was wholly disgusting. Gone is the chance for Iraq’s new regime to demonstrate its ability to govern in a judicious manner. We had hoped that Iraq’s Prime Minister al-Maliki would somehow have known the importance of symbolism when he signed Saddam’s the death warrant. The Iraqi people needed to see their government exercise a solemn and righteous power over their country’s ex-tyrant. The trial and execution could have resonated down through many generations much as the Nuremburg trials after World War II have done for Americans. Instead, Saddam was executed before an angry and vengeful mob. Even the conspirators in Abraham Lincoln’s assassination when hanged were attended by an at attention military picket.

Symbolically, al-Maliki has made it known that grievances throughout Iraq can be settled in any manner desired. The executioners were dressed as civilians and they harangued the prisoner as they readied him for execution. A chant of “Muqtada, Muqtada, Muqtada” was shouted from at least one witness to the execution. Muqtada al-Sadr is a power-wielding cleric who operates a rogue militia that has been implicated in the death-squad and torture tactics that now terrorize Baghdad. Security at the execution site was so slack that people with camera phones were allowed to record the actual hanging.

We are left to ask whether these oversights were intentional or were they a matter of gross incompetence. Either supposition dims our chances at a hoped for resolution in the Iraqi conflict.

Were the theatrics of Saddam’s execution intentional then al-Maliki’s message is to be viewed as a trenchant threat to unleash the fundamentalist Shiite militia against all Iraqis who would dare to object to the commands of Shiite cleric leader Muqtada al-Sadr. An impending Shiite pogrom against Iraqi Sunnis and Kurds is a real possibility that has been overtly encouraged by Saddam Hussein’s execution.