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Sometime today Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging. In hanging Saddam Hussein the Iraqi authorities, complicit with the United States, have validated his life's work. They have demonstrated, as he spent his life demonstrating, that might makes right and official murder is a proper tool of governance.
I will not go so far as to say that the Iraqi government has "become" like Saddam Hussein, because to my knowledge they did not torture him to death or execute him arbitrarily. After all, he did receive a trial for his monstrous crimes. Nevertheless, the moment the trap door opened beneath his feet, Saddam Hussein's world view was vindicated. Instead of spending the rest of his life in a cell, eventually becoming a footnote with only the memory of his crimes to keep him company, Saddam was given the chance to think to himself one last time "I was a great leader once, and now I am a martyr."
And that is the greatest injustice of all.
