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• Saturday, December 30, 2006 02:10 AM

  Twisted Logic

  How can "Professor" Cole possibly twist the deserved death of blood soaked dictator into "revenge"? I just love the logic that absolves a man of his personal responsibility for the death of so many of his countrymen, in much the same way most other commentators try to blame all of his crimes on the US. Sorry, this is the Timothy McVee clarity moment - when someone so guilty of heinous crimes gets the justice he so richly deserves, and there is really no justification for denying it.

  Gassing at Halajaba? Suppression of the Shia in southern Iraq after the first Gulf War? Destruction of the southern marshlands in Iraq? The famous meeting of the Ba'ath party where his enemies names were called and they were led out to be shot? Does anyone seriously believe that Saddam was manipulated or directed to do these things?

  But the part of the article that I admire the most are the assertions: "since the U.S. invasion he has gradually emerged as a symbol of the humiliation that the once-dominant Sunni minority has suffered under a new government dominated by Shiites and Kurds." Humiliation? Would that be perhaps as in "loss of running the country and control of all the good jobs and oil revenues? (even though we are only 18% of the population).

  Of course, we also have the obligatory slap at the Shia - "Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar" Or perhaps alternately as just executing Saddam before the end of the (western) year ends?

  When I read this and most other articles with statement like "Iraqis began to yearn for the oppressive security of the Saddam period." I am stuck by the moral bankruptcy in the intellectual community - that suggests that life in a dictatorship is now the preferable alternative to the potential for a free society. The "blood feuds" that you describe tearing Iraq apart are a direct consequence of allowing the "stability" to fester so long in this region as one group runs rampant over the other. If the invasion of Iraq has shown anything - it is that the tensions and pressures built up over decades cannot be easily contained - and they do not get better on their own.

  But revenge? No, justice was served today - and Saddam's death was one in Iraq that was richly deserved.

  —Ironclad Read Ironclad's other letters
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