There is a Difference.

Jim Hoagland is distressed:

I never expected to say that the Iraqis who put Saddam Hussein to death made the sadistic dictator look almost noble by their own depraved standards of behavior in that moment.

Oh for goodness sake, man, put on a pair of pants and toughen up, would you?

Let us not for a second draw an inch of equivocation between a few minutes of taunting and the callous and methodical murders of hundreds of thousands of people. No amount of taunting or chanting could ever make such a prolific killer look “almost noble” unless, in that moment, you have completely detached yourself from reality.

I was not proud to see that some of the very thugs who are holding Iraq firmly in the grip of fear and terror right now were presiding over Saddam Hussein’s execution. But there is nothing those men could have done in those few minutes that could even come close to the pure evil of Saddam Hussein’s decades of torture, genocide, and death. Nothing.

Hoagland asks a question that I think really cuts to the root of the matter:

The mishandled execution carries a larger message that President Bush must absorb for the decisive address he plans to give on Iraq as early as next week: If Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his aides cannot control a gallows chamber containing 20 people, how can they hope to manage a country that is disintegrating under the weight of religious and ethnic hatreds?

Let us remember the essential difference between these two men. Nouri al-Maliki will not be in office indefinitely. His administration has a finite length. his replacement will not require that hundreds and thousands of soldiers pour into his country to defeat his army. He will not have to be dragged out of a hole in the ground and put on trial for mass murder. He is an elected official in a country where the person in his position is decided by a free election.

That one simple fact is something we should never forget. Yes, it is true that there is terrible sectarian violence. But that violence is being largely egged on by Iran and there is a great deal we can do to stop it from happening if we simply confront Mad Mahmoud and the Mullahs directly and without wavering. it is also true that Moqtada al-Sadr has entirely too much power in the Iraqi government. But he, too, is not forever. Our soldiers have been waging a very quiet but intense war against him and his militias.

Iraq is not a bright and shining place, but a clear look at the stark reality of the situation there also shows that it is not a complete disaster.

Hoagland has forgotten something very fundamental. There is a vast difference between the excesses of an elected government and the predations of a tyrant. They are not remotely the same, no matter how much the former may taunt and ridicule the latter.