Saddam Dies Tonight. Hallelujah.

It is official. Saddam Hussein will hang for his crimes tonight.

The latest word is that it is likely to happen between 7 and 8 PM Eastern. When it happens, I will cheer for the execution that should have happened a decade ago but did not. We owe the dead of Iraq an apology that we cannot give. We allowed hundreds of thousands of them to die out of the cruel and cynical “realism” of our government. Their blood is not only on the hands of the man who will die tonight but on our hands as well. I truly hope that from their vantage points in the afterlife, they can find some way to forgive us for leaving them to die.

So when the networks break in to announce that Saddam Hussein has met justice I will certainly cheer but I’ll also pray that our leaders have the courage and wisdom to fight tyranny and genocide everywhere we see it.

UPDATE: The latest word now is that Hussein will be executed by 10 PM Eastern.

UPDATE 2: This post by Victor Davis Hanson says much of what I believe.

In the general condemnation of neo-conservatism, we forget, at least as it pertains to foreign policy, it arose from a variety of causes, not the least as the reaction against the moral bankruptcy of both rightist realism and leftist appeasement.

We were reminded of those poles these past few days with news that confirmed Arafat’s order to murder American diplomats in Khartoum. That apparently had made no affect on Bill Clinton, at least if it were really true as legend claims that such a terrorist much later was the most frequent overnight foreign guest to the Clinton White House.

Add in not just just the inaction after the first World Trade Center bombing, or Khobar Towers or the USS Cole, but all the other weird elements of appeasement, from Carter sending Ramsey Clark to beg for the hostages to Clinton dispatching Warren Christopher to sit on the Damascus tarmac and his own later praising of Iranian “democracy” as liberal.

But the antipode is just as bad, when we recall selling out the Kurds to appease the Shah, Turks, and the Iraqis, the deal for arms for hostages with the theocracy, arming the crazies in Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, playing off Saddam versus Khomeini, letting the Kurds and Shiites hang in the wind in 1991, the coddling of the Pakistani dictators and the House of Saud, and the infusion of Gulf money into the law firms, investment houses and arms consortia in Washington and New York, staffed with ex-administration “wise men” from both parties.

Neither Republicans nor Democrats are blameless. The history of our nation since Vietnam has been that of seeking “stability” by bribing and appeasing despots. It has cost us immeasurably. It has led not only to millions of dead Arabs but to the death of thousands of Americans on 9/11 and the murders of Spaniards, Indonesians, Britons, Australians, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Israelis (to name a few) in terrorist attacks just recently.

There is no simple answer to what we should replace realpolitik with, but I still say that it must follow one simple rule: No more tyrants.

UPDATE 3: CNN is reporting that Iraqi officials say that all the prepartions or Hussein’s hanging are in place. His end should come soon.

Larry King’s question? “…is there something ghoulish about this”?

If it’s ghoulish to wait expectantly for justice to come to a genocidal monster, I’ll willingly wear that label without a single pang of guilt.

Fox News is reporting from al-Arabiya that Hussein has reached the execution site and that his death will “take place any minute”.

The supposition is that the execution will be recorded. I rather think that’s a shame. I believe it should have been televised live so that the entire nation will know without a doubt that no one, not even the man once thought to be untouchable, is above justice.

UPDATE 4 (10:09 PM): Fox News is reporting from al-Arabiya that Saddam Hussein was hanged to death 10 minutes ago.

Official confirmation is forthcoming.

UPDATE 5: I know this will shock you all, but the leftist Huffington Post has nothing but scorn…for President Bush (via HotAir, which is also updating).

Let’s remember also that this trial is for the deaths of 150 people in retribution for an attempted assassination attempt again Hussein in 1982. Hussein responded by killing those men and boys and incarcerating and/or torturing about 1500 others. He razed the town, evicted the remaining residents, and later rebuilt it.

His other trial, which was ongoing but not over, involved the “Anfal Campaign” murder of 180,000 Kurds, displacement of about a million, and destruction of nearly every Kurdish village in Iraq. The campaign in the late 1980s featured the copious use of chemical weapons against the villages full of civilians. The name of the campaign, by the way, was taken from the 8th Chapter of the Koran called “Surat al-Anfal” (“The Spoils of War”) that recounted the warrior Muhammed’s fighting in the Battle of Badr.

For those of you were a bit uncertain about just how secular Saddam Hussein really was.

UPDATE 6: Well, not everyone here in America is sanguine or snarky about Saddam’s execution.

“Peace,” he said, grinning and laughing. “Now there will be peace for my family.”

Alwatan, 32, said Saddam’s forces tortured and killed relatives that were left behind when Alwatan left
Iraq in 1991. He was among about 40 men who gathered at the Islamic center.

“Now there will be peace for my family”.

And for a great many families, I imagine.

UPDATE 7: Fox News also carried a live telephone interview with Greta van Susteren from one of Hussein’s attorneys who confirmed the execution.

UPDATE 8: CNN has had on, for the past 40 minutes or so, the most amazing interview. The man’s, whose name I’ve not been able to get yet but who seems to be an official in the Iraqi government, has spent the time detailing the crimes of Saddam Hussein and the reasons why if we had not acted militarily, Saddam Hussein would still be murdering and oppressing Iraq long into the future. He noted now Saddam’s 14 year-old grandson was being groomed for power and how that grandson had already taken part in the cruelty. It has been quite the remarkable interview – one I have not seen on a major network news broadcast not named Fox News in a very long time.

Mini Update: The name of the man on CNN is Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi and he is Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations. I have not heard of him until tonight. He seems to be quite remarkable in enunciating the cruelties of Saddam Hussein and the hope that his nation feels now that it is free.

UPDATE 9: From See-Dubya of HotAir:

Iraq’s NSA is on the phone with Anderson Cooper right now and says Saddam carried a Koran, refused a hood to cover his face, and tried to look brave but was clearly “broken” by what was happening.

I sincerely hope he was broken. I hope he heard the voices of every single person he killed.

A last comment from Ambassador al-Istrabadi: “Saddam Hussein is now part of our past”.

No related posts.

Category: No More Tyrants