Catch-Up: Saddam's Execution

One of the short pieces I wrote right after returning from vacation in mid-January:

I just got back from 3 weeks in the Muslim world (2 in Pakistan, 1 in India), and which coincided with a certain execution. The points made in the Tarek Fatah's article about Saddam Hussain's execution:

"The fact is that far from fostering democracy in Iraq, the execution of the Iraqi dictator has turned a murdering monster into a martyr of mythical proportions for the Arab people.

...

His death will be a relief to those in America who feared being exposed for having aided Saddam as he murdered so many of his countrymen.

To the teeming millions in the Muslim world who saw Saddam being led to his death by slogan-chanting masked men, his hanging was an act of revenge, not justice, a lynching, not the carrying out of a death sentence."
http://www.thestar.com/article/167219 for full article.

is not accurate--it is a huge understatement. Especially from the point of view of the reputation of the US in the Muslim world. What one heard all week long that week in Pakistan--and I am talking about people with absolutely no fundamentalist leanings or sympathy for Saddam--was "They shouldn't have done that on Eid [on the day of the Festival]." And the thing to note specifically was that the "they" in that sentence was always meant to be the "The Americans". (People in Third World countries do not, when looking at the big picture, really pay attention to the thin facade of witless stooges, however brutal or self-agarandizing they might be.)

Technorati tags applicable to this post: Iraq - Saddam - Dictators - Pakistan