By Shavana Abruzzo
At the onset of his trial for crimes against humanity, the butcher had bragged, “If you want my neck, I am not afraid of execution,” and issued a warning to the presiding judge to “go to hell.” One arduous year later, Saddam Hussein was confronted with the grim facts of his miserable, murderous life, as he faltered to stand tall in the defendant’s pen while his countrymen demanded his head in punishment for a smidgeon of the evil deeds he had subjected Iraqis to – with blood-laced fanfare – for more than three decades. In the end, the former world leader was as pathetic as at the time of his capture by American troops from the rat hole where he held court in his final days as a deposed, lice-riddled thug, whom history will remember as a rancorous footnote from hell. It is with joy that the decent world hails Saddam’s demise. His 30-year-plus regime of control, fueled by a bloodlust for power and carnage, and completely devoid of empathy for his fellow man, woman and child, is the grim legacy of a man, who was born with nothing, achieved the global dream of millions to become the head of his state and then became so reviled that the Free World amassed an alliance to be rid of him. By hook or by crook. It succeeded and Iraqis rejoiced. They exulted because the brute, who had plastered his mug shot across the land, erected statues of himself at every nook and cranny and fomented fear in their hearts was gone. Saddam Hussein abused his privilege of public office. He abused his people. He abused international law. He abused the fundamental human requisite of compassion and decorum. With each passing year, he fancied himself immune to impunity. His mis-perception was ratified by a whole world, which turned the other cheek to his unquenchable thirst for carnage and misery, which he perpetrated upon the innocent through unspeakable practices, which only his maker can fully address. At the eleventh hour, as his attorney begged mercy for his rotten client, Saddam prepared himself for his final exit, bleating the cry of the hapless-hopeless in an Arabic Internet posting: “Here I offer myself in sacrifice. If God Almighty wishes, it will take me where he orders to be with the martyrs.” His “sacrifice” is shady and poisoned with rivers of blood from the slaughtered. It is tainted with the deafening cries of the tortured and raped. It is malodorous from the tossed, decomposed bodies of the tens of thousands he silenced with weapons of mass destruction. It is one “sacrifice” God can do without. E-mail “A Britisher’s View” at BritView@courierlife.net. All letters become the property of Courier-Life Publications and are subject to publication unless otherwise specified; please include your name, address and daytime telephone number for verification.
