Saddam Hussein executed

Prayers for his victims as well as for his soul.

IF the death penalty is justifiable, then Saddam surely deserved to die. I myself find it hard to protest his execution; he was a mass murderer, and his guilt was not in question. However, many have condemned the death penalty even for Saddam, and I commend them. I recognize that the Episcopal Church, and many other churches, has condemned the death penalty, that many countries have abolished it, and that for religious and ethical reasons I normally oppose it. I am not perfect, and if the crimes are heinous enough, I usually don't protest too much.

That having been said, let us not forget those who abetted Saddam. As Robert Fisk says,

'Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability.'

'But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam's cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman's lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. "Handed over to the Iraqi authorities," he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a "martyr" to the will of the new "Crusaders".'

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2112555.ece

A quote from the sci-fi series Babylon 5 is appropriate; this goes for Saddam as well as for the American government officials who abetted his murderous reign:

Elric: "Well take this for what little it will profit you. As I look at you, Ambassador Mollari, I see a great hand reaching out of the stars. The hand is your hand. And I hear sounds. The sounds of billions of people calling your name."

Londo (eagerly): "My followers?"

Elric: "Your victims."