While the current Iraqi government cannot protect the families of their police officers, the Iraqi state cannot stand. It is not lack of training that makes American units so much more effective than Iraqi units. It is terror. The American’s wives and families are safely across wide seas. An Iraqi police officer, prevented from answering terror with terror by an occupation army with modern morals, cannot win a war of terror against gloves off terrorists. Thus, the sectarian militias. If the official government is being prevented from using Saddam style state terror to win a conflict of terror, unofficial dotted line proxy groups with a thin sheen of plausible deniability have to fight the war instead. That this undercuts the authority and integrity of the official government is problematic, but perhaps inevitable.

Mind you, autocratic states ruling by terror are obsolete. If democracy cannot force the government to follow the will of the people, it can often vote the most corrupt people out. In head to head direct competition, western democracies have been defeating autocratic regimes badly in both martial and economic contests. I am no fan at all of autocratic methods and values.

But one must expect failure the verst several times an autocratic state attempts modern democratic values. How many republics has France had? How easy was it for Hitler to suppress Germany’s democracy? When Britain was developing the modern form of democracy, how many civil wars and beheaded kings did they have to work through?

Modern values are not to be taken for granted. The difference between modern political thought and traditional government is huge. Trust in the processes is hard to come by.

But those who do not share our values are not mad. They are not insane. If they are evil, they are evil by a modern standard which has no reality in their world. One could wish this were not so. One can wait for a day which is apt to come decades or centuries hence when it will be so. I expect in time Islamist government to fade as Royalist, Fascist and Communist government has already faded.

But do not underestimate the degree to which a people will cling to their existing culture. In blog space, one should be very aware how firmly the American Red values can take hold, how much it takes to shift an individual out of their firmly established perspective on how the world works and ought to work. Autocratic values are equally firm. Millennia of the world working in the old way does not make them inclined to easily release the old way. They know how ugly the world is. They don’t know that it can be different. Indeed, Allah demands that it not be different.

It is proper in Blue America to shun and recoil from the noose. Fine. Shudder and shy, preach and proclaim your virtue. Just don’t think your logic is the only logic one needs to understand. Iraq is not going to embrace Blue American values, or Red American values. That hope is forlorn. That opportunity has been botched. The logic that is going to triumph will be Saddam’s logic. We can break his neck, but another is apt to rise in his image.

I can see the argument for the death penalty for someone such as Hussein.

Two wrongs don’t make it right.
State sanctioned murder is murder nonetheless.
…and for all of Bush’s faux Chistianous “though shalt not kill” rings very hollow.

Besides all of the above, I believe it would have been far more prudent to just keep Saddam in jail. Now he is a Martyr and Americans and Iraqis will die because of his death.

Everything thing about this war is wrong…I can see no positives from it all.

Also, I believe it took a strong hand to keep the sectarian and Tribal sides in Iraq in check, and for all of Saddams evils he did keep Iraq in a certain status quo. For all his faults, Saddam H. was not stupid.
People may not agree with me here but I also believe that Saddam was following the orders of the United Nations, he was just doing it bit by bit, slowly, because he knew that if he capitulated in a short time (the way Bush wanted him too) there would be moves by the different sectors resulting in the violence we see today. He was also belligerent which didn’t help.

Bush just had to have his war. And having just come over from Attytood there are still many wingnuts who think Iraq is going well and that the disastor is just a whole lot of whoohaa from the left. I was simply stunned at the ignorance.

Others, like Boilerman, have said most of that which I could add to the discussion. I’ve said more at my blog, posting items from Josh Marshall and Robert Fisk that also add perspective.

This was not justice. It should be mentioned that al-Sadr’s renewed support for al-Maliki set the bar at the execution of Saddam. That being satisfied now, we might consider whether the stage is now set for a Shia strongman government to replace the hanged strongman. And whether the latter will prove less brutal than the former.

I might as well hope for some positive to emerge because otherwise, there is nothing advanced nor redeemed by this death. The insult delivered by the judge to the Sunnis is not a very hopeful sign. But I continue to hope al-Sadr proves more enlightened than the media portrayals, just as he’s already demonstrated he’s smarter than the neo-crims thought.

We have fewer principals to stand behind. America is less than what it was.

A moment of silence for the United States of America.

That it was undertaken to look like it was done by a band of thugs on a holiday is more proof that Bush and his minions are believers in the Saddam doctrine of power themselves.

-GSD

I am struggling, frankly, to decide how I feel about all of this…

I’m not.

There is no question in my mind that Saddam Hussein deserved to die.

There is, however, a very big question in my mind that we deserved to kill him.

That is how I feel about every execution.

The early reports on the international wires showed that not one head of state was willing to unequivocally endorse the hanging. It was a kangaroo court, and everyone knew it. Shameful and disgusting.

By making Saddam (or the alleged Saddam) a martyr, a deliberate provocation has been given to the Muslim world — as if it needed another one. Look for the chaos and killing to increase, and that’s just fine and dandy for Bushco, who never wanted peace in the first place.

Anyone feel a draft?