Saddam is gone

Gone through the hangman’s hole - Koran in hand.
Tightly clutched until the jolt,
when Allah’s word came down to earth.

Saddam’s trial was one of the great farces of history. Even though real courts such as the one in the Hague and the International Criminal Court were already established and were in place and ready to do their work, Saddam was tried in an ad hoc Iraqi circus. It was a deadly circus to be sure, with several of his lawyers or members of their families killed, and others who felt forced to quit the case for their own personal safety. Even the judges took turns coming and going, at least one being replaced because he was considered “too easy” on Saddam. Some witnesses testifed against Saddam with their faces hidden, their voices scrambled and their identities unknown and withheld.

Saddam was tried and convicted of killing 148 Iraqis in war. That was the official reason for his death in an early morning hootenanny. And he was hanged in an west Texas "necktie" party on the most sacred day in Islam, Eid al-Adha, the day of Holy Sacrifice which commemorates the day Abraham killed his son, Ishmael, to honor Abraham's god.

What about all those other unspeakable sins he was alleged to have committed? Well, people will continue to talk about those but History will eventually have to reflect that there were no allegations introduced, testimony taken, or evidence tested and proven about any of those, and all that will begin to mingle, throughout the millenia, with other grudges, complaints and hearsay comments about him, slowly assuming their place as part of a web of unproven and untested folklore about a great martyr.

Saddam was going to be killed - there was no doubt about that from the beginning. So in that sense, the outcome of his trial really meant very little to him. The real loser in all this was us, the people of the world and civilization itself. Saddam’s trial - the one he didn't get - was not really for him. It was for us - all of us. It is in our great interest that all killings of civilians by government leaders, and all acts of genocide and those who initiate such actions be investigated and those responsible be brought to justice - and again, their being brought to justice is not for their punishment but for our ability to endure as a civilization.


©John Womack, 2006. All rights reserved.