On this website, and no doubt in most homes in Iraq, the fear was that the US would delay handing the monster over to the Iraq Government or would interfere to prevent or postpone his execution. Since the decision to hand him over must have been taken at the highest level, we applaud President Bush for doing the right thing.
The most important reason for having the death penalty is that habitual killers can no longer kill. Opponents of the death penalty are always preoccupied with ‘possible miscarriages of justice’ of which there are few, and never with the well-documented evidence of spared killers who claim new victims. The sadistic Hussein, who once ordered torture and murder on a daily basis and who was a constant threat to his neighbors, is now rotting flesh and many millions of people will breath easier, knowing that neither luck nor liberal forgiveness can give him the opportunity for vengeance. Radical and Right give three cheers!
There is no doubt that the Media Class was outraged by his death. I have yet to read a report by a reporter that treated the execution as good news. Of course, on a few op-ed pages there were articles that (rightly) skated past the details of the execution and focused on the justice, effectiveness and symbolism of his judicial capital punishment. I would single out Marty Perez (editor-in-chief of The New Republic) for his piece in the Wall Street Journal on 4th January and a superb piece by Mark Steyn in the Jerusalem Post on 1st January. But these are not reporters ‘reporting’ the news, they are commentators with openly expressed opinions and only the more attentive will have read their informative views consigned to the inside pages. Most people will have got their take on Hussein’s execution from front page news reports and what they will have digested is that the execution was a gruesome shambles, carried out with cruel sectarian vindictiveness, and providing yet another reason for abandoning capital punishment. They will also have been told that experts are certain it will create a set back for the ‘reconciliation’ process in Iraq.
They will also have unwittingly digested the view that the whole world was appalled by the process, for attached to every report was the news that the Pope, or the Italian President, or a UN spokesman, or some un-named US general, or the UK deputy Prime Minister, or all Sunni politicians, or EU leaders or just plain “some critics” were condemnatory of either the execution, its manner or both. Many ‘reports’ included comments such as “more a sectarian lynching”, a “sectarian tone”.
The truth of course, is that the sane people of this world, with the exception of diehard Sunni Muslims, approve of Hussein’s execution and could care less about the manner in which it was conducted. They understand that the monster got more than a fair trial, was allowed to play to the gallery during the trial and was cosseted whilst in jail and that he was lucky to get any of this whilst his henchmen who are still at large, are busy spreading death and destruction amongst the innocent. The Shias, Kurds and hundreds of thousands of relatives of Hussein’s victims can be forgiven if they were vindictive and sectarian, outside or inside the death chamber.
What is most informative about the reporting is what lies behind its uniformity. Why has the Media been so incensed and why does it march in lockstep?
We can start from the point that there exists a ruling Media Class and it has designated the invasion of Iraq as ‘Bush’s war’ and not the West’s war against Islamic Imperialism. In doing so it has deliberately amplified the voices of its Leftist constituencies, all of whom detest American power and long for some kind of revolution in the USA. For these Leftists, and for the Media Class that orchestrates their rage, the capture of Hussein was cause for more than their mere disappointment, it was reason for a fury that could not be publicly expressed. Any US success in Iraq (or Afghanistan) sickens them and raises the specter that the hated Bush might gain some credit and the war gain popularity.
We must not overlook the fact that Hussein and his Baathist Party are also regarded as part of the socialist brotherhood. Unlike General Pinochet, a free market exponent who was hounded and condemned daily in the Media world, killers who have a link to international socialism always get an ultimate free pass for their crimes against humanity. Che, Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin et al are gradually rehabilitated by the Media as the years pass. Some reporters in the Wall Street Journal always referred to the accused Hussein as Mr. Hussein. In the same paper the US president is usually referred to as just ‘Bush’! Such petty practices tell us everything we need to know about whose side these people are on.
There is inevitably a sick kind of logic that evolves from emotional thinking and it makes for some strange bedfellows. The emotion that fuels the Bush-haters, and the haters of American constitutionalists, and of the Christians of the US, and of the free market system (which underpins free speech and true freedom), inevitably culminates in covertly cheering the US death toll in the current war, secretly gloating at the successes of the Sunni insurgency and the deaths of Shias in Baghdad and of course, anger that Hussein got what he more than deserved. Because such feelings cannot be openly expressed except at dinner parties of the rich and famous, those who hold them have to nitpick about the executioner’s taunts or claim abhorrence about the death penalty in principle. The emotion of knee jerk anti-Americanism has led some conservatives in the UK and nationalists in the BNP to condemn the Hussein execution, each scurrying around to find a plausible rationale to cover emotion-driven motives. Shame on them!
All who take satisfaction from seeing a tyrant swing for his crimes can rejoice. It is as simple as that!