Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

January 04, 2007

Some Thoughts on Saddam's Final Journey

I finally decided to watch the "unofficial" video of Saddam's hanging last night. I guess I had to get my courage up because no matter how much I know he deserved his fate, watching someone die is no laughing matter. It's a serious moment, not one that should be given to hooting and hollering. I admit to having a few knots in my stomach as I watched. (If you haven't seen it yet and wish to, just go to Google and enter "Saddam video hanging" or something similar and you should find it with no problem.)

The quality of the video wasn't that great, as the person holding the illicit cell phone kept moving it up and down, so that often the viewer is just looking at the floor or the ceiling. However, it was held in place long enough to see the noose put around Saddam's neck, see the trap door open and hear its crash, and see Saddam a moment later, eyes lifeless.

And so the Butcher of Baghdad is no more. Certain European whinemongers and their American counterparts are denouncing the death penalty in general and the death penalty for Saddam in particular. For example, Tim Hames of the Times of London called the execution "offensive," saying that “Mainstream middle-class sentiment in Europe now regards the death penalty as being as ethically tainted as the crimes that produced the sentence." (What the European press thinks and what the middle-class they claim to represent thinks might actually be two different things, according to this poll.)

Jeff Jacoby reminds us that under Saddam, children were doused in gasoline and burned, used as human shields, and entire families were executed in the blink of an eye, among other atrocities. If "mainstream middle-class sentiment in Europe" equates burning children alive with hanging the man responsible for burning them, then mainstream middle-class sentiment in Europe, to quote Mr. Bumble, "is a ass -- a idiot."

In days of yore, criminals were hanged publicly in England, and not always for murder. The people who went to see the hangings considered it a festival day of sorts, not as a solemn occasion meant to deter further crime. And let us not forget that during the French Revolution and the period after it, known as The Terror, rich aristocrats and those considered to be traitors to the revolution were publicly beheaded by the thousands on the guillotine. So forgive me if I look at current European sentiment against the death penalty with a jaundiced eye.

Saddam was given a trial, something he didn't afford the victims of his own brutalities. His death was quick and relatively painless, which again was not something he considered when ordering the deaths of thousands of his own citizens. Iraq and indeed the world is better off without him. Those who want to whinge about it are free to do so. Meanwhile, Iraqis can now breathe a little easier, knowing that there is no way this monster can ever come back to power. Jeff Jacoby calls it an "act of moral hygiene." I couldn't put it better myself.