Deals with the Devil

I’ve not really commented on the execution of Saddam Hussein – I briefly thought about putting a cheap shot on here about it when I heard that he had gone but I decided against it. Instead I settled on sending the Moai a text commenting that the Iraqi government did not hang about with Saddam.

But Prescott’s comments that the leaking of the video was deplorable (hell, if ever a man would know about being deplorable it would be Two Jags) have roused me from my post New Year’s Eve stupor and into commenting.

Sure, those in the execution chamber did not give Saddam a dignified exit from this world and I agree that they should have conducted themselves with a little more decorum (even if the executions conducted in Saddam’s name were very similar Saddam’s own death). And I agree that there is something really ghoulish and seedy about filming someone’s death on a mobile and then posting it on a website - it is actually because I find it so ghoulish and seedy that I am not going to link to one of the copies of the video. They are out there if you want to find them. But I actually find the circumstances of Saddam’s demise – as unpleasant as they are – quite ironic given both the nature of capital punishment and what the ensuing scandal about the mobile video indicates about the state of Iraq at the moment and how foreign policy works.

I’m not sure how I feel about the death penalty. On the one hand, I think that some people probably do warrant the death penalty (Saddam being a very good example) but I am not sure what the willingness to put its’ citizens to death says anything positive about said state at all. But I would imagine that, when you are stood, like Saddam, on the trapdoor with a comedy sized noose around your neck then your focus lies elsewhere rather than on what the witnesses are doing. Sure, the jeering and lynch mob attitude shown on the mobile phone video are unpleasant and sickening – and very different to the cold and clinical way in which the US puts its’ citizens to death – but scratch away the baying of the mob and you get to the real crime – the actual execution, the actual state sponsored murder. By all means have a debate about the execution of Saddam Hussein, but let’s focus on the key event that happened in that execution chamber – which was, as obvious as it sounds, the execution. Forget the mob atmosphere – that is very secondary to the fact that a man died.

But even if you are most shocked and stunned by the taunts of the crowd, why would you be surprised? This was the death of a hated man, in a hastily arranged execution, in a country that has a legacy of undignified, and often far more brutal, executions. The execution of Saddam Hussein was an act of revenge – regardless of whether you think that revenge is justified or not. And given it was revenge, it could have been a lot worse for Saddam.

And ultimately for me, the real dark side to the death of Saddam is less about the fact that the Iraqi state put him to death (as mentioned above, I would say he is probably deserving of the sentence) but rather what it says about International Relations and foreign policy. One dictator dies for his crimes against humanity. Others - like Pol Pot, Saparmyrat Nyýazow, and Pinochet – die of natural causes, unpunished for their crimes. And others still – like Kim Jong-Il, Muammar al-Gaddafi and Fidel Castro – sit in their palaces, untouched, still persecuting their people. The Coalition of the Willing took on Saddam Hussein (and the Taliban in Afghanistan) because they were (relatively speaking) easy to defeat. Nyýazow and Pinochet were allowed to go on because they offered some sort of support at some point to the West. Castro and Jong-Il are tolerated because they are (or have been) too difficult to take on. The death of Saddam simply indicates the brutal and disheartening compromises inherent in any sort of foreign policy – we attack one dictatorial regime and allow the leader to drop to his death through a trapdoor, but have to leave others to go on as they are, suppressing their people, confounding and compromising the supposed democratic ideals of the West. For me, the undignified and unseemly end to Saddam may be one small piece of human evil leaving this world, but it cannot hide the evil still ruling over so many countries in this world. All this death shows is the awful unethical compromises and the deals with the Devil that make up the reality of foreign policy.