{"id":9480,"date":"2006-12-30T09:03:11","date_gmt":"2006-12-30T14:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9480.html"},"modified":"2006-12-30T09:03:11","modified_gmt":"2006-12-30T14:03:11","slug":"saddam-hussein-executed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/saddam-hussein-executed\/","title":{"rendered":"Saddam Hussein executed"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one will miss the Butcher of Baghdad, and no tears will be shed for his death. In terms of political analysis, though, there are a couple of ways to consider Saddam Hussein’s execution. First, as Josh Marshall noted<\/a> in an accurate and poignant piece, is the fact that “this whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters.”<\/p>\n

Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us…. <\/p>\n

This is the best we can do<\/i>. Hang Saddam Hussein because there’s nothing else this president can get right.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Second is consideration of how the execution might affect the broader conflict in Iraq. The consensus seems to be, not much<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

Any positive reaction among Americans also is likely to muted by disenchantment over the number of U.S. troops who have died in Iraq.<\/p>\n

In Iraq, the execution of Hussein has commanded attention, but it may not outlast the daily struggle faced by most Iraqis.<\/p>\n

“People in Iraq today are concerned with very basic things these days. Will this put more food on the table, make the streets safer, put more electricity in the wires?” Serwer asked. “The answer is likely not. So many people will not see this as that big.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Third is the fact that even the execution seemed to reinforce<\/a> the sectarian conflict that’s tearing Iraq apart.<\/p>\n

The tribunal also had a unique sense of timing when choosing the day for Saddam’s hanging. It was a slap in the face to Sunni Arabs. This weekend marks Eid al-Adha, the Holy Day of Sacrifice, on which Muslims commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son for God. Shiites celebrate it Sunday. Sunnis celebrate it Saturday \u2013- and Iraqi law forbids executing the condemned on a major holiday. Hanging Saddam on Saturday was perceived by Sunni Arabs as the act of a Shiite government that had accepted the Shiite ritual calendar. <\/p>\n

The timing also allowed Saddam, in his farewell address to Iraq, to pose as a \u201csacrifice\u201d for his nation, an explicit reference to Eid al-Adha. The tribunal had given the old secular nationalist the chance to use religious language to play on the sympathies of the whole Iraqi public.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And fourth, while Saddam’s death is a milestone for history of Iraq, the fact that December has been the deadliest month<\/a> for U.S. troops in 2006 strikes me as at least as important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No one will miss the Butcher of Baghdad, and no tears will be shed for his death. In terms of political analysis, though, there are a couple of ways to consider Saddam Hussein’s execution. First, as Josh Marshall noted in an accurate and poignant piece, is the fact that “this whole endeavor, from the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9480\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}