Is this what they mean by civilisation?

Sunday, December 31, 2006

His last words: 'Palestine belongs to the Arabs'. The executioner's last words to him: 'Go to hell'. Few will mourn Saddam Hussein, especially among those of us who opposed his policies from the very beginning. But that exchange alone means that in the Arab world at least he will continue to be remembered as someone who spoke up for justice for the Palestinians and who was one of the few rulers in the region who stood up to the Americans.

It wasn't always so. Saddam was brought to power with the blessing of the Americans, who provided intelligence to help him root out his Communist opponents, hanged by him as he was hanged yesterday. Iraq was encouraged to wage war against the new Islamic Republic of Iran. The US helped with arms and intelligence, including the provision of chemical weapons which filled its victims' lungs with blood. Throughout the 1980s these weapons supplies continued, and when the outcome looked too evenly balanced, the US intervened even more directly on Iraq's side. As the war neared its end, the USS Vincennes shot down an Iranian civilian aircraft, killing 300 people 'by accident'.

Saddam stopped being a friend and ally when he went too far and invaded Kuwait, even though April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, led him to think the US would not intervene.

Just as they were able to make him, they were able to break him too. War in 1991, bombing and sanctions for 12 years, another war and invasion, capture, trial and then execution. All made in America: the trial, imprisonment and execution had little to do with the Iraqis who had suffered so much under him. Saddam was 'handed over to the Iraqi authorities' from the Americans only at 5.30am; he died at 5.55am.

And what a gangster operation it was: the only man not hooded was the condemned man, the final exchanges were argumentative and insulting, the whole episode was filmed and all except the actual death shown on state televison.

Those who waged war in the name of enlightenment values will perhaps draw the parallels with the public executions where crowds lined what is now Oxford Street to watch the condemned on their way to Tyburn tree. It was regarded as a mark of civilisation that such executions were abandoned over 100 years ago, and any capital punishment more than 40 years ago. Yet we allow this barbarism to take place under the guise of punishing dictatorship.

Most dictators will not fear similar punishment: their countries are crucial staging posts in the increasingly frenzied trips by Tony Blair to find peace in the Middle East, any prosect of which has been destroyed by his and George Bush's policies.

Those policies are tearing the region apart, and increasing terror threats elsewhere in the world. Yet it was announced on the same day as Saddam's execution that John Scarlett, the man who sexed up the dossier to tell us the lie that Saddam's weapons could hit British interests in 45 minutes, is to be knighted for services to diplomacy.

George Bush is reportedly thinking of sending even more US troops into Iraq 'to finish the job' in a country which has been destroyed by the invasion. And while many of us might feel that a new year holiday in Robin Gibb's Florida villa comes pretty close to hell, Tony Blair remains unpunished and unaccountable for his role in the disaster.

So when are these criminals going to be caught?

12/31/2006 11:49:00 AM | Permalink