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In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful
The Death of a Convenient Monster
By Ibrahim Ramey
Saddam Hussein is dead. And it's hard for most people to imagine anything
sacrilegious or wrong about his execution.
After all, Saddam, for the last two decades, has been the media poster child
for political violence and evil not only in Iraq, but also in the world. His
strutting, arrogantly handsome image filled television screens and news reports
since the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, and especially in the years following Gulf
War I.
And who can forget the images of the tortured, twisted victims of Saddam's
Kurdish victims of poison gas attacks, or the broken, mutilated victims of his
savage political repression machine.
But while it's true that most the world is elated (or at least relieved) that
the Iraqi president is no longer among the living, there is something wrong-and
even sinister-about the way in which he was dispatched.
If international law still has meaning among the "civilized" nations of the
world, it's clear that it was right for the people of Iraq to bring Saddam
Hussein Al-Tikriti before some bar of justice, whether in Baghdad or The Hague.
It may even be defensible (at least for some) that he paid the ultimate price
for his crimes against the people of Iraq.
Yet the legitimacy of the trial and execution of Saddam was badly eroded by the
fact that it happened under the authority of a government in collaboration with
the foreign invaders of a sovereign state. These invaders, in fact, themselves
violated international law (and morality) by launching a war, in violation of
the United Nations Charter, based on the false premise of weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq that did not, in fact, exist.
None of this should mean that Saddam should have been exonerated. But it does
mean that the legitimacy of his trial and execution was compromised by the very
illegitimacy of the United States war on Iraq.
What is also disturbing is the fact that the actual execution of Saddam Hussein
(which violated the Iraqi Constitution by taking place on the sacred Eid
al-Adha), devolved into a virtual revenge killing, with some of his Shi'a
guards visibly mocking and insulting their prisoner, and apparently refusing to
allow him to complete the recitation of his final Shahada ("There is no God but
Allah, and Muhammad is His Messenger"). He got to the word "Muhammad" when the
gallows floor was dropped.
The aftermath of the execution witnessed great exultation among the Iraqi
people victimized by Saddam's regime, and cries of outrage from his much less
numerous supporters and Sunni co-religionists. But the heated passion generated
by Saddam's death is unlikely to bring closure to the investigation of the real
crimes of his regime (and the outside powers, including the United States of
America, that have periodically helped him do his dirt). And the vortex of
mutual violence that has consumed Sunni and Shia Muslims alike is not likely to
end because of Saddam's death.
Executions are final dispensations, and they cannot be undone. And there is
no value in concocting historical fiction that denies, or minimizes, the
magnitude of the evil of Saddam Hussein's rule. We who will not mourn his
passing know that Allah (SWT) will be the ultimate judge of his life, even if
the process of temporal justice was flawed.
Killing Saddam may provide some sense of cheap vindication for the Americans
and Iraqis who have wanted him dead for a long time. No doubt, the Bush
administration will spin the event as another example of their "success" in the
face of a failed war policy. But the death of Saddam Hussein does not alter,
in the least, the geopolitical reality in Iraq or the continuation of the
almost apocalyptic level of violence in that nation.
The end of a convenient monster- partially assembled and paid for by our own
tax dollars -should force the world to look more deeply at the layers of
international intrigue, arms dealing, and complicity that enabled his evil to
take root, and institutionalize itself, in Iraq.
Iraq is still bloody, broken, and occupied. The misery of the Iraqi people has
not ended.
But if true freedom and justice will come to Iraq, then the other guilty
parties-and especially those responsible for the economic sanctions and war
that killed, since 1990, far more Iraqis that even Saddam Hussein could manage
to do-must face some form of justice as well.
Ibrahim Abdil-Mu'id Ramey
-----------------------------
Ibrahim Ramey, the author, is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights
Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. He has traveled to
Iraq on two occasions (in 1998 and 2000) as is one of the founding members of
the humanitarian Campaign of Conscience for the Iraq People, which openly
challenged the sanctions against Iraq.
Ramey, in addition to having lectured at numerous U.S. universities on the
issue of the Iraq war, served as a member of the U.S. Tribunal on Iraq, which
investigated violations of international law committed by U.S. military forces
during the initial months of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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