Decision ‘08

Hitchens On The Hanging

I expected Christopher Hitchens to, if not rejoice, then at least to express satisfaction at the end of Saddam Hussein. In that, I was quite foolish, as I should have recalled Hitchens’ firm stance against the death penalty. I most assuredly did not expect him to be this appalled:

The disgusting video of Saddam Hussein’s last moments on the planet is more than a reminder of the inescapable barbarity of capital punishment and of the intelligible and conventional reasons why it should always be opposed. The zoolike scenes in that dank, filthy shed (it seems that those attending were not even asked to turn off their cell phones or forbidden to use them to record souvenir film) were more like a lynching than an execution. At one point, one of the attending magistrates can be heard appealing for decency and calm, but otherwise the fact must be faced: In spite of his mad invective against “the Persians” and other traitors, the only character with a rag of dignity in the whole scene is the father of all hangmen, Saddam Hussein himself.

How could it have come to this? Did U.S. officials know that the designated “executioners” would be the unwashed goons of Muqtada Sadr’s “Mahdi Army”—the same sort of thugs who killed Abdul Majid al-Khoei in Najaf just after the liberation and who indulge in extra-judicial murder of Iraqis every night and day? Did our envoys and representatives ask for any sort of assurances before turning over a prisoner who was being held under the Geneva Conventions? According to the New York Times, there do seem to have been a few insipid misgivings about the timing and the haste, but these appear to have been dissolved soon enough and replaced by a fatalistic passivity that amounts, in theory and practice, to acquiescence in a crude Shiite coup d’état. Thus, far from bringing anything like “closure,” the hanging ensures that the poison of Saddamism will stay in the Iraqi bloodstream, mingling with other related infections such as confessional fanaticism and the sort of video sadism that has until now been the prerogative of al-Qaida’s dehumanized ghouls. We have helped to officiate at a human sacrifice. For shame.

In Baghdad last week, I missed the best chance I shall ever have to mention rope in the house of a hanged man. The house belonged to Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Saddam’s repellent half-brother and one of the two men who are now scheduled to follow him through the trapdoor. These days, it serves as the office of President Jalal Talabani, with whom I was invited to take lunch. The television was showing the trial of Saddam and his associates for the Anfal campaign, that ruthless and mechanized devastation of Iraqi Kurdistan and the systematic slaughter and clearance of its people by conventional and chemical weaponry. Every Kurd I know was eager to see this episode properly aired in court and placed on the record for all time, with its chief perpetrator on hand to be confronted with his deeds. Instead, the said chief perpetrator was snatched from the dock—in the very middle of his trial—and thrown as a morsel to one of the militias. This sort of improvised “offing” is not even a parody of the serious tribunal that history demands.

The concerns expressed by Hitchens are very similar to what our good friend Fargus posted elsewhere in the comments, and the unsavory aspects are duly noted and largely agreed with. Hitchens’ concerns about the U.S. role at least acknowledge the passivity of our culpability, rather than placing the U.S. in the role of instigator in the manner of Glenn Greenwald:

This depressing New York Times article by John Burns and Marc Santora details the frantic, reckless manner in which Saddam Hussein was shoved into the noose in clear violation of Iraqi law. We can’t even get a hanging right. With all of the world watching, we yet again were the primary authors of a violent, uncivilized, and primitive act which — no matter how justified in some ultimate moral sense — was carried out in the most thuggish, wretched, inept, and (we now learn) patently illegal manner.

But the article cited by both Greenwald and Hitchens makes it clear that we were NOT the primary authors of this thuggish procedure (unless you want to make the case that we set the whole chain of events in motion with the invasion, which is rather a tenuous ledge to balance upon):

…[A] narrative assembled from accounts by various American officials, and by Iraqis present at some of the crucial meetings between the two sides, shows that it was the Americans who counseled caution in the way the Iraqis carried out the hanging. The issues uppermost in the Americans’ minds, these officials said, were a provision in Iraq’s new Constitution that required the three-man presidency council to approve hangings, and a stipulation in a longstanding Iraqi law that no executions can be carried out during the Id al-Adha holiday, which began for Iraqi Sunnis on Saturday and Shiites on Sunday.

In other words, criticism of the procedure’s more ghoulish aspects is fine and well, and you can even make the case, as Hitchens did, that we were too passive in pressing our concerns…but I don’t see how you make the leap to American being the ‘primary authors’ as Greenwald does, unless perhaps you are guided by an innate hostility towards everything this administration touches, no matter how tangentially.

I should point out that I care not one whit on whether Saddam found his manner of death humiliating or unfair - no circumstances can top the horrors he routinely inflicted upon his enemies, real and imagined. My only concern is that the death not be used as a tool of propaganda by those who make it their business to stoke the sectarian tensions, and in that respect, yes, upon further reflection, it would have been better to have waited, and to have handled things a bit more ‘officially’.

Still, what’s done is done, and in the competition for ‘worst blunder’ in Iraq, this one doesn’t even make the top ten, whether the blunder belongs to America or the Iraqis…

13 Responses to “Hitchens On The Hanging”

1 too many steves Says:
January 2nd, 2007 at 6:52 pm
The complaints about a failure to follow proper procedure and the law are legitimate and I’m glad to hear that those are the concerns we raised and advocated. Those complaints against the manner in which the sentence was carried out are much ado about nothing. Whether Saddam was executed in the most gentle and respectful way imaginable or in a ghoulish and thuggish way, as he was, makes no difference as the result is the same: he is dead.

Christopher Hitchens is an avowed death penalty opponent, thus his complaints ring hollow as he would never approve no matter the method.
2 Scrapiron Says:
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
I just read an article with a scenario that makes sense. Suppose they had not executed Saddam, but sentenced him to life in prison. Now a group of terrorists take over the elementry school in your neighborhood and have one demand. Release Saddam within 24 hours to a country that would let him roam free or they kill every child in the school. It happened in Russia. Want to take a bet that the same people crying about the hanging wouldn’t be front and center demanding he be released? This could possibly or most probably would happen. Dead men cause no more trouble.
3 Scrapiron Says:
January 2nd, 2007 at 9:50 pm
By the way, the terrorist will mourn his death for a few days and the left wing democrats will whine for a few months and then both will go away
4 Aaron Says:
January 2nd, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Here’s something I found quite surprising: according to polls, most people in not only the US, but also the UK, France, Germany, and Spain supported the execution of Saddam. The only major Western European state where it didn’t have majority support was Italy, and even there, it was only 4% shy of half.
5 Andy Vance Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:05 am
Whaddya expect from a drink-soaked pinko?

Shorter Hitch: The death of one tyrant is a tragedy; the death of six-hundred fifty-five thousand proles is mere statistics.
6 Mark Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 am
Now, now, Hitch has a long-standing relationship with the Kurds of Iraq and takes a back seat to no one in his hatred of Saddam. His distrust of the Lancet figures, as we’ve discussed at length, is widely shared, and even as a proponent of the death penalty, I can’t accuse him of anything more than standing up for his principles…
7 too many steves Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 8:58 am
True and right. But he is uniformly opposed to the death penalty, regardless of the circumstances so his arguments against Saddam’s execution are meaningless. He would be complaining no matter how it was done. No disrespect intended.
8 Mark Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 9:09 am
too many steves, I was referring instead to our good friend Andy’s shot at my man Hitchens, the ‘drink-soaked pinko’…
9 Fargus Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 1:27 pm
tms, I don’t think that your criticism of Hitchens’ criticism is valid here. I’m opposed to the death penalty, but I respect Iraq’s sovereignty and their right to carry out their own laws. That’s fine. In this case, the death penalty is a given. The concern isn’t over how humane it was; rather, the concern is over the effect that that lack of restraint on the part of the Iraqi government may have on the dynamics on the ground in Iraq.
10 Andy Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
In any case, Prodi of Italy is yammering about taking it to the UN for a global ban on executions. OTH, Kofi’s replacement, Ban, looks like he’s off to a good start undoing Kofi’s damage. Ban said he will not discuss executions since that is the sovereign right of the State(s).

Stick that in your ear Kofi & Prodi. Now let’s see what Ban has to say about Dafur, Zimbabwe and other regions of genocide. That and Iran/NoKo & Putin’s neo-imperial Rodina.
11 too many steves Says:
January 3rd, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Fargus: I appreciate your clarification and respect that position - in fact, I agree with the point about the potential impact on the ground in Iraq. I’m quite delighted to see the Iraqi government move quickly to find out who is responsible for that video. I’m extremely disappointed that they seem to have circumvented some of their own laws in the process. And I can’t bring myself to watch the video, no matter how justified I believe the death penalty is in this case.

But I didn’t read Hitchens central point as being concern over the impact of Saddam’s execution on the day-to-day circumstances on the ground in Iraq. I reread his piece and my original impression is reinforced: for him there are no circumstances under which he would agree that Saddam should have been executed; regardless of the method and that of the crimes committed.

I do see that he takes particular issue with the ghoulishness of the act, the overly expedited process, and the apparent ignoring of some aspects of Iraqi law - all of which concern me too. But I also have the sense that he would have been nearly as outraged had Saddam been executed via lethal injection in an ultra clean hospital room with only th executioner and a couple of silent witnesses a few months from now.
12 courage Says:
January 11th, 2007 at 12:26 pm
it is very foolish for them to do that f***ing thing they call hanging to the former presdent of iraq
13 Mark Says:
January 11th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
For excessive cursing on my blog, and for posting twice in a row under different names (sock puppetry, in other words), you are hereby banned…