How You Played the Game

I wrote this back on November 6th when the lower court verdict first came in. Anyone with a half a brain knows that any US controlled court, especially under these circumstances, would not overturn the ruling. I am pretty sure as much stands at the time I am writing this sentence as it did back in November.
What I find most intriguing about Saddam getting sentenced to hang by his own people is the anger that so many people have about the decision itself. From an American, middle-class, Catholic, tax-paying standpoint, there are Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds in Iraq. Of course there are several derivatives of each of these, but that's what I see. It would be like an Iraqi identifying a Baptist from a Methodist, or a banker from a lawyer on Wall Street. Saddam was a Sunni, and for the next 30 days at minimum, he still will be, whatever Allah chooses to do with him after that, only Allah knows. For a man who is unapologetic for everything he does and has done, he has never used religion as the excuse or the driving force. Allah was not his guide, nor his mentor.
If Islam, true Islam, is anything like Christianity, he can be forgiven for his sins, if he wishes to do so. He respects Islam, and does not use the name of his religion in vain, so he may have that going for him when the great scorer picks up the chalk.
No doubt his own people, the Sunnis, are upset at the decision to hang him like a side of beef in the town square. Like him, they feel what he did was right. To Iraqis, Kurds appear to be subspecies, while Shiites and Sunnis can drink from the same fountain.
Saddam doesn't deny he poisoned Kurds in hopes of exterminating them, he just feels he did nothing wrong. After all, it was his country. He makes the laws. What does it have to do with anyone else? His bad luck was that he was sitting on one of the larger oil reserves in the world. His mistake was calling attention to himself by invading Kuwait. One of the few Middle Eastern countries an American can walk with the guarantee that his head and body won't be miles apart within a 30 day period.
The biggest irony of the whole ordeal was that two men with the same last name brought him to his predicament. Two men that had no business in Iraq. But they are Texans. And Texans love oil. They love oil so much that they thought with their big head for once and befriended (adopted) the Saudi royal family, who coincidentally have the largest oil reserve in the solar system. Attaching them would mean that Americans would be folklore to the next generation.
So in short, Saddam did this to himself. It would have been in his best interest to have WMDs. At least you don't hang for that.
On of the judges, who was firm in his stance from the beginning, may have been Saddam's wake up call that his outcome was bleak. While Saddam continuously disrupted the court, the judge ordered him to "Shut Up." Anyone who has been in a court knows what that means. Convicts are silenced and lawyers with Ivy League underwear have teared up. But when you have caused 25 million people to live in fear for 25 years, and a bit less for years before that, being silenced can really and truly get you to shut up. It may not have seemed to humble him, but then again, this man had skin as thick as his heart was stone. I'm willing to be he didn't sleep that night.
Not long after that, he decided that the court and trial was tainted, which it may or may not have been, but that doesn't matter. He felt that he should speak when he wanted, but was reminded that he now had the rights of the very people he unjustly executed. None.
Saddam's fate is met with mixed emotions worldwide, and it seems like a majority don't want him executed. Which is tough to stomach from a nation built on the gun. This man murdered thousands of innocent people because of little more than their ethnic background. And while people in Iraq are happy (the Shiites) and angry (the Sunnis), no one should be surprised. Not even the man himself. Saddam was never going to see freedom again. Not in Iraq, not in the Middle East, and certainly not in Europe. Europe had the biggest opponents to the war, the last thing they want is a trigger happy US president declaring war on one of them for granting asylum. In addition, imagine the cost now and future costs of keeping this man alive. It was only right and fair that Iraq be allowed to try him, even if the people involved were pretty much hand picked by the US. But there would be no way that Iraq could afford to imprison ths man. And every one on the planet could bet their weight in gold that the biggest and most intense jail break in the history of man would occur as soon as the last wheel of the last C-130 left the ground.
What the execution of Saddam Hussein should mark, is not only closure for so many Iraqis, but also the beginning of the end for the US occupancy. It has become clear to every democrat and almost every republican that there were no WMDs, and we F'd up. Big time. It is also becoming clear that Saddam and his regime were the only people that could control this country. It is clear that while many feared him, many loved him too. 100% of the vote at each election doesn't lie. Our second reason for entering that country, and a distant second at that, was to free oppressed people from a violent dictator. One can wonder what the Iraqi people have to be thankfule for more: that Uday didn't survive to take over, or that George Bush had daughters. Uday was the true menace, not even controlled by his father. The Bush daughters have everything their father doesn't, the most important being a woman's nature. Women don't send their sons to war, and especially to one that doesn't involve them.
So barring any unforeseen events, Bush won. He got his man. Iraq lost because it is taking an entire extermination to kill one man. I always thought the saying went "sacrifice one to save many." While the western world may view the eastern thought as backwards, the opposite of this saying couldn't be closer to that view.