Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Steyn sees Saddam's Execution from a Different Angle

A bit of jerky to chew over.
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4 comments:

Tecumseh said...

When a dictator has exercised the total control over his subjects that Saddam did, his hold on them can only end with his death.

Could a Frenchman understand that concept? Naahhh....

1/03/2007 7:23 AM
Tecumseh said...

From yesterday's Taranto:

Saddam's 'Law'

Here's a curious passage from the main New York Times story on Saddam's hanging:

Finally, he was ousted by an American-led invasion force in 2003 and the country fell into a new round of internal violence as the rule of law disintegrated and the Western invaders proved unable to control a country in the aftermath of totalitarian rule.

Presumably the Times didn't actually mean to equate "the rule of law" with "totalitarian rule," but it's an interesting case of sloppiness. Along similar lines is this from the Associated Press:

Hours after Saddam faced the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power, Iraqi state television showed grainy video of what it said was his body, the head uncovered and the neck twisted at a sharp angle.

That "accused" seems out of place, but more important, did Saddam really face "the same fate" as his victims? Surely there is a difference between a lawful execution of a duly convicted murderer and the murder of innocents by a dictatorial state. Come to think of it, it's the difference between the rule of law and totalitarian rule.

1/03/2007 2:00 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...

Howdy fellahs. Here's Hitchens on the matter.

Steyn makes more sense than Hitchens in regards to the execution of Saddam. The idea that executing or not executing this brutal dictator would change the course of Shi'ite and Sunni relationships (if we could call it a "relationship") is ridiculous (put down the single malt for a sec, Hitch!). Hitchens did pull a darn good quote from Orwell.

Regardless of what Hitchens says, it was interesting to see how an oppressive tyrant who lived in his own construct of morality faced a singular sentence that he carried out thousands of times over on his own subjects.

1/04/2007 6:36 PM
Tecumseh said...

What goes around comes around, eh?

1/04/2007 7:44 PM

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