Friday, December 29, 2006

Death to the Dictator

It appears that the Iraqi government will execute Saddam Hussein tomorrow. Many Shiites around the world will rejoice. Many Sunnis will mourn and instantly proclaim him a religious martyr. Many Muslims, without regard to Islamic denomination or other tribal allegiance or national affiliation, will ignore the purported involvement of the Iraqi government in the trial and sentencing of Saddam and see his execution as another American incursion into the Islamic world. To them, Saddam Hussein will become a political martyr.

Islamic martyrs, whether proclaimed as such by religion or politics, are not needed at any time, but especially at this time when the future of Iraq and peace in the Middle East hangs in the balance. Islamic martyrs with the soon-to-be mythical stature of Saddam Hussein are not helpful to America, Iraq or any other country in the Middle East.

When a criminal is executed it’s typical for people to speak about closure. There’ll be no closure with the death of Saddam. There’s more likely to be an opening – of festering wounds filled with the infection of hatred and vengeance. The pus from those wounds will almost certainly be poured on Americans.

My opposition to this execution is based on my fear that more American troops will die because of this one death; more than would have died if this one man spent the rest of his life in prison. I’m not willing to trade those American lives and the attendant sacrifice of their families for this dictator’s death. The price of that piece of ultimate justice will ultimately be too high. He’s just not worth it. He’s been brought down, jailed, tried and convicted. That’s enough. Enough good men and women have died bringing this bad man to this point.

I readily admit that if anyone deserves capital punishment it’s a brutal and barbaric dictator like Saddam Hussein. He may be the recipient of some form or degree of mercy from a God who knows more about when to dispense mercy than we do, but this despicable man is wholly undeserving of mercy from his captors and his country. His case is devoid of mitigation.

Nonetheless, I would rather see Saddam live a couple of long and lonely decades in abject humiliation in a 6’x8’ Iraqi prison cell, like the “spider hole” from which he was pulled by U.S. troops. For a man like Saddam, who has been surrounded by adoring and slavering lap dogs who have obeyed his every whim, solitary confinement in a Shiite-run prison is hell – the inferno of the powerless. There would be no one to command; no one to obey; no one to listen; no one to agree; and, no one connected with America to make him a martyr. If he’s not already insane, I suspect he’d enter the hell of insanity in due course.

In prison, his pathetic impotence would be a constant reminder of the eventual fate for anyone who would emulate him, a reminder that very few brutal and barbaric dictators die peacefully in their palace bed. Saddam would be seen living in hell.

Hanging from the gallows, Saddam Hussein is freed of his impotence and is invested with new power in the twisted minds of Middle Eastern terrorists. Without regard to how we picture his life after death, we have to keep in mind how Islamic extremists will picture it. Zealots act in this world on the basis of their views of life and death, not our views. In the mind of the terrorist, Saddam will be seen living in heavenly glory and bidding them to join him through the Gates of Jihad.

Some may proclaim this execution to be a victory. It may be, but we won’t know that for a long time. To know that, we’ll have to wait until we’re finished counting the men, women and children who will die because of the war in Iraq after tomorrow. We’ll have to estimate how many of those men, women, children – and American troops – die not just because of the war, but because of what happens tomorrow.

History is always written in the days after tomorrow.

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