Vengeance Is Mine (Sayeth the Decider)

So George W. Bush got his man. The American government handed over Bush's vengeance totem to a street gang of taunting thugs, who wrapped his neck in a thick hang-knot, taunted him over arcane differences in ancient Muslim politics, chanted the name of killer cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and dropped him to a brutish death from a cheap sheet-metal gallows. Black ski masks made the macabre scene look like something out of Spielberg's Munich; the cheap camera phone video gave the execution an air of casual brutality. And the sleeping President awakens in luxurious sheets and pronounces himself satisfied that justice has been served.

This is justice, American-style? A cheap, showy lynching in a concrete-block shack with guards in second-hand leather jackets and loose, open collars, chosen for their own particular stake in vengeance? This is what our President demands of our soldiers? That they hold a prisoner in secret American custody through a circus trial and virtually no appeal, acting on the orders of a weak and small-minded prime minister and deliver Saddam to his killers just 20 minutes before his death?

Listen. Don't shy away from the video, from the still photographs, from the corpse, from the accounts of the "witnesses." You owe that to the families of the nine American servicemen whose deaths were announced the very day of Saddam's long drop. Look at the tawdry, vengeful murder and mourn. Not for Saddam Hussein, a murderous tyrant who faced a tyrant's back-alley execution at the hands of a mob, as many have since the days of Robespierre. Mourn for your country, for your system of justice. Mourn for the bit of our own honor that swung from the rope in Iraq.

UPDATE: There are some wonderful, thoughtful posts out there on the Saddam hanging. Christy Hardin Smith's point of view as a former prosecutor and defense attorney is a must-read. Here's a taste (read it all):

As I read through the news articles on the Saddam hanging this morning, it was that lack of human compassion, even on any level, that struck me as somehow unseemly, as undignified and as uncivilized, barbaric even. That feeling of someone being thrown to the lions, no matter how deserving of punishment, while the masses look on and cheer at the tearing from limb to limb — the disgusting spectacle of bread and circuses, set to a theme song and a hasty graphics design on the 24-hour news networks.

And Josh Marshall's piece at TPM has been widely making the rounds, but here's the key  quote (hat tip to Jim Wolcott):

"This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur--phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us."

And Fareed Zakaria has it right in Newsweek:

The saga of Saddam's end—his capture, trial and execution—is a sad metaphor for America's occupation of Iraq. What might have gone right went so wrong.

Comments

[blue girl]

Mourn for the bit of our own honor that swung from the rope in Iraq.

Well said, Tom.

And from what I've always read of him, Zakaria normally gets it right.

[Tom K]

I recently happened upon an essay, in the collected works of Orwell, addressing the unsavory feelings of an intelligent, highly-political and war-supportive victor at the prospect of war crimes trials.

It's entitled "Revenge is Sour", and can be found at:

Like much of Orwell's writing, (i) it reads rather raw to the modern ear; and (ii) it rings true. Not the best thing to come from that great journalistic mind, surely, but perhaps the most apt to this discussion.

[Tom K]

Let me try the link again:

http://www.george-orwell.org/Revenge_is_Sour/0.html

[bruce]

one of the points that jumped out about the hanging is how little control the al-Maliki government has in Iraq. You would think that the people HANGING Saddam would be their most disciplined, loyal cadre. Instead the hangmen broke out chants of "Muktada! Muktada!" Someone making the cell phone video was heard to joke that the hangmen apparently had not heard that the militias had been disbanded.

I was frankly impressed with Saddam's demeanor and compusure.

The balance sheet is that we have managed to restore Saddam's reputation in the Arab world and create a martyr.

[Tom K]

Hey, Tom:

Have you read the Orwell essay? I see Christopher Hitchens referenced it in his article on the hanging . . . it's worth a look.

[b tween]

I think "So George W. Bush got his man" should be amended to read: So George W. Bush got his man's body double.