The Belgravia Dispatch: More on Saddam's Hanging

January 01, 2007

More on Saddam's Hanging

Adnan Pachachi, speaking of Saddam's execution: “Either it’s terrible incompetence or it’s an act of revenge--a vendetta." Well, no, it was both Mr. Pachachi. It was terrible incompetence by the American overseers (is anyone surprised, after all, this was a Bush 43 supervised event?). And, too, it gave more the appearance of an act of revenge/vendetta than application of deliberate justice (see the guards chanting praise to Moktada al Sadr moments before Saddam was hung). Put simply, another major setback to Iraqi national reconciliation, it would appear, not to mention the U.S. national interest.

As I recently wrote, this trial should have taken place in The Hague, or the U.S. should have better strived to recreate a more South African style Truth and Reconciliation Commission in tandem with the Iraqi authorities (yes, I know, this last easier said than done given the revanchist spirit among Iraq's Shi'a, especially post-Samarra mosque bombing, but that's yet another reason to have convened a properly constituted international tribunal where the proceedings wouldn't reek of victor's justice). Instead, as Glenn Greenwald aptly quips, "we can't even get a hanging right."

Yes, this latest blunder frustrates immensely, with the grainy cell phone video footage of a vigilante-style execution in dark, dungeon-looking surroundings causing yet another body blow to America's repute in the (non-Kuwaiti) Arab world (can someone please dispense with the sad joke that is Karen Hughes' supposed stewardship of her public diplomacy outfit, for where is the damage control after Condi Rice's description of cluster munitions littering southern Lebanon as constituting the "birth pangs" of a New Middle East, or now, Hughes' silence after this latest fiasco?).

But, in fairness, there is another grim reality here too, which is that spiraling events are overtaking us in Iraq at breakneck speed (while POTUS inexcusably dithers: "It's my job to listen to a lot of opinions and come up with a strategy that says we have a plan"). Much like the Iranian "diplomats" we handed back (apprehended at one of Mr. 80% Solution Abdul Aziz Hakim's complexes, reportedly specifically at Hadi al-Ameri's house, a leader of the Badr Organization, Hakim's militia!) because Maliki's government so insisted (though realistically we had little choice in the matter, all told), we were similarly barely able to exert control over the execution process, having apparently to fight to persuade Maliki's government to allow Saddam to be buried near his hometown, for instance, rather than in an unmarked grave.

(Incidentally, is it just me, or are tensions increasingly likely to explode between the U.S. and Iraqi Shi'a--arguably further exacerbated if we try a "surge" that, not least, will be aimed at securing mixed and Sunni quarters of Baghdad from Shi'a killing squads (this concern is a debatable proposition, but let's at least be sure to consider it before pulling the trigger on a surge)? More on this troubling trend here).

Finally, and related, don't miss Nir Rosen (excerpted below):

Saddam Hussein became the first modern Arab dictator to die violently since Egypt's Anwar Sadat in 1981. Saddam's hanging at the hands of chubby Iraqi men wearing ski masks is likely to be perceived by many as an American execution and as part of a trend of American missteps contributing to sectarian tensions in Iraq and the region. The trial of Saddam was viewed by detractors as an event stage-managed by the Americans. According to Human Rights Watch, the Iraqi judges and lawyers involved in prosecuting Saddam were ill prepared and relied on their American advisers. American minders shut off the microphones and ordered the translators to halt whenever they disapproved of what was being said by the defendants.
The important Muslim holiday of Eid al Adha was due to begin over the weekend. For Sunnis it began on Saturday the 30th of December. For Shias it begins on Sunday the 31st. According to tradition in Mecca, battles are suspended during the Hajj period so that pilgrims can safely march to Mecca. This practice even predated Islam and Muslims preserved this tradition, calling this period 'Al Ashur al Hurm,' or the months of truce. By hanging Saddam on the Sunni Eid the Americans and the Iraqi government were in effect saying that only the Shia Eid had legitimacy. Sunnis were irate that Shia traditions were given primacy (as they are more and more in Iraq these days) and that Shias disrespected the tradition and killed Saddam on this day. Because the Iraqi constitution itself prohibits executions from being carried out on Eid, the Iraqi government had to officially declare that Eid did not begin until Sunday the 31st. It was a striking decision, virtually declaring that Iraq is now a Shia state. Eid al Adha is the festival of the sacrifice of the sheep. Some may perceive it as the day Saddam was sacrificed.

Saddam had been in American custody and was handed over to Iraqis just before his execution. It is therefore hard to dismiss the perception that the Americans could have waited, because in the end it is they who have the final say over such events in Iraq. Iraqi officials have consistently publicly complained that they have no authority and the Americans control the Iraqi police and the Army. It is therefore unusual that Iraqis would suddenly regain sovereignty for this important event. For many Sunnis and Arabs in the region, this appears to be one president ordering the death of another president. It was possibly a message to Sunnis, a warning. The Americans often equated Saddam with the Sunni resistance to the occupation. By killing Saddam they were killing what they believed was the symbol of the Sunni resistance, expecting them to realize their cause was hopeless. Sunnis could perceive the execution, and its timing, as a message to them: "We are killing you." But Saddam's death might now liberate the Sunni resistance from association with Saddam and the Baathists. They can now more plausibly claim that they are fighting for national liberation and not out of support for the former regime as their American and Iraqi government opponents have so often claimed...

...The unofficial video of the execution, filmed on the mobile cell phone of one of the officials present is sure to further inflame sectarianism, because it is clearly a Shia execution. Men are heard talking, one of them is called Ali. As the executioners argue over how to best position the rope on his neck Saddam calls out to god, saying, "ya Allah." Referring to Shias, one official says "those who pray for Muhamad and the family of Muhamad have won!" Others triumphantly respond in the Shia chant: "Our God prays for Muhamad and the family of Muhamad." Others then add the part chanted by supporters of Muqtada al Sadr: "And speed his (the Mahdi's) return! And damn his enemies! And make his son victorious! Muqtada! Muqtada! Muqtada!"

Saddam then smiles and says something mocking about Muqtada. "Muqtada! It is this..." but the rest is blocked by the voices of officials saying "ila jahanam," or "go to Hell." Saddam looks down and says "Is this your manhood...?" As the rope is put around Saddam's neck somebody shouts "long live Muhamad Baqir al Sadr!" referring to an important Shia cleric who founded the Dawa Party and was also Muqtada's relative. Baqir al Sadr was executed by Saddam in 1980. He is venerated by all three major Shia movements in Iraq, the Dawa, the Sadrists and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. Others insult Saddam. One man asks them to stop: "I beg you, I beg you, the man is being executed!" Saddam then says the Shahada, or testimony, that there is no god but Allah and Muhamad is his prophet. When he tries to say it again the trap door opens and he falls through to be hung. One man then shouts that "the tyranny has ended!" and others call out triumphal Shia chants. [emphasis added]

Yep, yet another blunder. Amateur hour, yet again, with this country's international position, national security, and related vital interests continuing to take a hammering globally.

Posted by Gregory at January 1, 2007 04:49 PM

Comments

Considering that the soul of the Dixiecrat is the essence of the modern Republican Party, this was no blunder, but an embrace of traditional values.

Posted by: SomeOtherDude at January 2, 2007 06:56 PM | Permalink to this comment

It's possible. When Saddam (Saddam!) said "Is this your manhood..." I immediately thought of Chapter XII of Huckleberry Finn-Why the Lynching Bee failed:

" Sherburn never said a word — just stood there, looking down. The stillness was awful creepy and uncomfortable. Sherburn run his eye slow along the crowd; and wherever it struck the people tried a little to outgaze him, but they couldn't; they dropped their eyes and looked sneaky. Then pretty soon Sherburn sort of laughed; not the pleasant kind, but the kind that makes you feel like when you are eating bread that's got sand in it.

Then he says, slow and scornful:

...

"You didn't want to come. The average man don't like trouble and danger. YOU don't like trouble and danger. But if only HALF a man — like Buck Harkness, there — shouts 'Lynch him! lynch him!' you're afraid to back down — afraid you'll be found out to be what you are — COWARDS — and so you raise a yell, and hang yourselves on to that half-a-man's coat-tail, and come raging up here, swearing what big things you're going to do. The pitifulest thing out is a mob; that's what an army is — a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers. But a mob without any MAN at the head of it is BENEATH pitifulness. Now the thing for YOU to do is to droop your tails and go home and crawl in a hole. If any real lynching's going to be done it will be done in the dark, Southern fashion; and when they come they'll bring their masks, and fetch a MAN along. Now LEAVE — and take your half-a-man with you" — tossing his gun up across his left arm and cocking it when he says this."

The fact we let Saddam play Sherburn's role in this drama is just mind-blowing. We so suck.

Posted by: Martin Morgan at January 2, 2007 07:05 PM | Permalink to this comment

Oh how the mighty are falling....

Posted by: Dan at January 2, 2007 07:17 PM | Permalink to this comment

Is it just me, or are tensions increasingly likely to explode between the U.S. and Iraqi Shi'a

from this vantage point, I get the distinct impression that the US has no coherent policy currently --- and that the factionalism in the Green Zone that is making effective government in Iraq impossible is mirrored on the Potomac.

And it appears to me that one of tne of the factions on the Potomac is hellbent on starting a war with Iran, and is doing whatever it can to create the necessary "provocations" that will result in a "justification" for attacking Iran. They are hoping for some kind of dramatic attack on US forces by a Shiite militia -- and will then "find" the evidence tying the attack to Iran....and BOOM!!!!

The Post article you linked to identified the central problem with Bush regime policy in Iraq --- the "natural" flow of events arising from the overthrow of the Baathist regime would result in a "Shiite Islamic republic" with close ties to Iran. Bushco tried to make this river flow uphill.... building dams and aqueducts to make it appear that it was possible to defy gravity..... but the dams are full to overflowing, and the Shia ascendancy is inevitable.

Posted by: p.lukasiak at January 2, 2007 07:18 PM | Permalink to this comment

I just wanted to say thank you so much for this incredibly informative blog.And I mean everything you write.Not just this entry.I find myself in agreement with about 99% of what you say.And also in agreement with many of the people who post comments.Thank you again.I always learn when I read your writing.

Posted by: Forrest at January 2, 2007 08:19 PM | Permalink to this comment

I was actually quite surprised that Saddam was given a "real" funeral and burial plot, and not just dumped in a ditch somewhere. Equally surprising to learn that it was the Americans who pushed for the service...

Posted by: Geoduck at January 2, 2007 09:12 PM | Permalink to this comment

“Either it’s terrible incompetence or it’s an act of revenge--a vendetta." "Well, no, it was both Mr. Pachachi. "

Well, gee, Greg, thanks for another timely leftwing instantiation of the excluded middle (followed by the cant du jour.) Tertium non datur meet The Belgravia Dispatch.

Did you ever stop to consider that maybe Hussein's hanging, grating upon the senses as it was, becomes explicated simply
by the fact that his bounty hunters and their bloody zeitgeist are all that remain from his cannibalistic dominion? Oh, my. It ain't like the poor, psychotic bastards were being taught Roberts Rules of Order. We are not talking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir here, folks.

Hussein's underworld understood two things: dead and soon-to-be. Three years with team USA and the democratists wouldn't change that fact. There wasn't a whole lot of time, ever, being spent on civil disourse and platonic jurisprudence. Not now, not before.

The reality is, his fateful moment came, long overdue, and the hyaena smelled fresh meat. This wasn't either revenge or incompetence. It was just the law of the jungle unfolding, and your little western E-camera eyes got a peek at the abyss.

No more, no less.

-resh

Posted by: reshuffle at January 4, 2007 03:23 AM | Permalink to this comment

Revenge isn't a part of the "Law of the Jungle"? The problem is we are suppossed to be witnessing the bloom of "democracy" in the new Iraq, not the unfolding of the law of the jungle. We didn't waste the lives of 3,000 of our armed forces bringing the law of the jungle to Iraqis did we?

Posted by: t-bone at January 4, 2007 03:55 PM | Permalink to this comment

President Saddam Hussain, Was A prisoner of War, captured by The U. S. armed forces in Iraq. Plus held by the U.S. in the Green zone. It is hard to believe that , on A religious holiday. Of Eidal Adhia, That Saddam was turned over to the Shia's who he was killing for years? The hanging was A sicking disgrace to people who love justice. for this was not justice it was A lynching watched closely by the U.S. forces. This is just the start of an all out conflict.

Posted by: Henry at January 4, 2007 04:20 PM | Permalink to this comment

Back on the night of shock and awe, I felt awfully sick at what had begun. When word filtered in (within minutes) that Saddam had been executed, I felt the same sickness. There are moments in time and certain actions in fact when what is done can not ever be undone or even made up for, no matter how one may later repent. Both these actions qualify as irreversible, unredeemable, and unforgivable markers in time.

I do not believe either one happened by accident.

It is inconceivable that the entire series of what we kindly call "blunders in Iraq" are truly that.

When will we learn there is no truth whatsoever in the words of "administration officials" of any rank?

Posted by: Elder4Truth at January 4, 2007 05:08 PM | Permalink to this comment

Tbone-

"We didn't waste the lives of 3,000 of our armed forces bringing the law of the jungle to Iraqis did we?"

The Iraqis didn't have squat to do with our little democratic experiment. Our invasion in Iraq transcended Iraq. We're there so the Middle East learns by osmosis the Battle Hymn of the Republic, God Bless America and-if we can get on a roll-Tupac.

The Iraqis are an afterthought. They always were. To coopt Lincoln's words: we'd have invaded whether all the Iraqis were freed, some were freed or none were freed. The only freedom that matters to us is the kind that lets us put more hotels on the global boardwalk.

And, no, Hussein's hanging wasn't strict revenge; it was just proof of the sociopathic meme that prevails in the jungle. Our soldiers aint fighting an insurgency, al Qaeda or a civil war.

They're fighting a primordial instinct-one that is too cozy with death and too empty of life. And the hanging we saw like the enemy we confront has no other mystery.

-resh

Posted by: reshuffle at January 5, 2007 06:55 AM | Permalink to this comment

It warms my heart to see the first comment to Gregory's fine post is SomeOtherDude writing that "the DIXIECRAT PARTY... is the essence of the modern Republican Party, this was no blunder, but an embrace of traditional values."

And SomeOtherDude's general concept is echoed moments later by Martin Morgan, who details how noted American author MARK TWAIN wrote about the COWARDICE of the American lynch-mob, especially the Southern "lynch 'em at night wearing masks" version.

BUT! p. lukasiak writes "... from this vantage point, I get the distinct impression that the US HAS NO COHERENT POLICY currently."

Well, NO! Mr. Bush and his neo-conservative (Leo Straussian) and neo-Confederate (Lott/Helms/Thurmond/Burns/Inhofe/Cheney/Gingrich/DeLay etc.) allies, DO HAVE A VERY SIMPLE, COHERENT POLICY: with their disaster-recovery INCOMPETENCE and in-your-face crony corruption they have effectively ETHNICALLY CLEANSED New Orleans of its Black voting majority; and in their little war in Iraq they have ALREADY _CLEANSED_ almost 10% OF THE POPULATION! (600,000+ dead, another 200,000+ emigrant refugees, and easily another one million forced to migrate to refugee status, for almost 2 million disempowered Iraqis out of a nation of 25 million, less 3-4 million Kurds. Or almost 2 million out of 20 million Iraqis "cleansed" from their homes, towns, and villages, with at least 1/4 of that figure "permanently cleansed," i.e. dead.)

What is amazing is that, given our vast information sources of today, we Americans blindly and stupidly refuse to accept the obvious fact, much as "Good Germans" in the late 1930s and during the WWII years (early 1940s) were willing to let their leader speak for their nation when "defending the Third Reich" against "enemies domestic and foreign."

But don't take my word for it, that there is an alliance of convenience between the (often Jewish, usually intellectual) neo-cons and the (anti-intellectual, often anti-semitic) neo-Confederates, and that ETHNIC CLEANSING has been their holy grail since the days when god told Abraham to settle in "the promised land" and have his descendants outpopulate (and ethnically cleanse) all his neighbors from the region who had been there long before Abraham arrived. Michael Lind describes all the above in his masterpiece book "Made in Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics." (Hint: replace "Southern Takeover" with "Dixiecrat" or "neo-Confederate" or "Lynch-mob" to realize what he is talking about.) Lind isn't a perfect author, his foray into Vietnam war scholarship has some visible flaws for example. BUT when describing "The Southern Takeover of American Politics" Lind knows what he is talking about; he was born and raised in Texas smack in the middle between Confederate heritage pro-slavery family influences and the more progressive, modern, positive, and independent strain of Texas culture that embraced abolition, higher education, and human rights. He started his academic career examining the various religious traditions in Texas (including the hard-core firebreathing "chosen land at all costs!" fundamentalist Baptist and Pentacostalinheritors of the Jewish conquest tradition), so when he branched his career out into discussion of politics, he understood the myths, legends, and theology of the hard-core, fundamentalist, neo-segregationist radical right better than many of the leaders who were icons of that tradition. (Such as Strom Thurmond, Jesse Helms, Coke Stevenson, and their modern heirs Bob Jones, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Trent Lott, James Inhofe, Conrad Burns, et al.)

Lind writes that the post-bellum Confederates really never "lost" the Civil War: they made a NEGOTIATED SETTLEMENT whereby they had to GIVE UP CHATTEL SLAVERY, but MAINTAINED segregation - white dictatorial, absolute-power-of-life-and-death political supremacy - for the next 100 years. They were only reluctantly forced to give up segregation, and only because WWII, the Cold War, and the space race brought progress to the very doorstep of the Deep South, and especially because the "fight to bring freedom and democracy to Vietnam!" rhetoric (propaganda) looked pathetically silly as right there in "modern" America tens of thousands of Blacks were prohibited from having any political "freedom" or rights.

Any Democrat who hasn't read Lind's book is GROSSLY IGNORANT of the motivations of the Bush White House, Rethuglican congress, and right-wing Scalia/Rhenquist judiciary. (The later with their Antonin Scalia throwback to the Borgia Popes and Clarence Thomas throwback to the African kings selling their conquered neighbors off to European slave traders.)

And even the well-read posters at this blog can't quite bring themselves to notice, "just like neo-confederates, ante-bellum Confederates, and fundamentalist Moses, Joshua, and Jericho Jews, ETHNIC CLEANSING is the TOP priority of the Bush administration... and, due to a servile, corrupt, and dishonest 'news' media, they are actually pretty good at it!

Posted by: lazi.... at January 5, 2007 01:55 PM | Permalink to this comment