Robert Fisk, writing in the Independent, says,
"When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam's return by his execution, the West's enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair."
Australia's The Age newspaper reports,
According to White House spokesman Scott Stanzel, the former Iraqi president's trial, conviction and execution showed that the Iraqi people had replaced the rule of the tyrant with the rule of law.
The trouble with that is the rule of law in Iraq is meaningless. About 300 people a day are dying in sectarian violence, and according to some estimates, 600,000 people have died, most of them killed by insurgents, militias and death squads, since the US-led invasion in March 2003. What does the rule of law mean in a lawless, ungoverned society?
If Saddam's execution offers the Maliki Government some small hope of shoring up its crumbling support among its Shiite constituency and its Kurdish partners, his death will do little for George Bush's standing with the American people.
Osama was an enemy of Saddam. Saddam was a secular dictator who eschewed Sharia. He was a minority Sunni blocking the majority Shia.
Saddam's death solidifies the vaccuum in leadership in Iraq. It sends a message to other Dictators, Kings, Emirs, Sheiks, whatever you want to call the billionaire thugs who rule without democracy in the desert-- a message that when you stop dancing the puppet game for the USA and the west, you may not be able to keep on doing your own dance. You die. This, at the same time, sends a message to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and others, that they can sucker the US, Neocons and other imperialists suffering from hubris into helping them take down their enemies.
This execution will not help the US one iota. It will hurt the US. It will make it clear that doing business with the US can be deadly. It will show that working with the US as an ally can be more dangerous that doing without the US, when fighting an enemy.
