Saddam's Fate

Shiite political leader: “Today is the best day we have seen since the fall of Saddam’s regime,” said Ayad Jamal al-Deen, a moderate Shiite political leader. “The death of this man will help to release many Baathists from Saddam’s mafia. The violence will be reduced.”

( Sunni ) Worshiper in Gaza: "What is he [Saddam], a sheep? I think the Americans wanted to tell all Arab leaders who are their servants that they are like Saddam, nothing but a sheep slaughtered on the day of Eid," said one worshipper, Abu Mohammad Salama.

The execution of Saddam Hussein is the passing of an iconic figure that no longer represents any say or majority amongst Muslims or the Iraqi political mainstream. Not that Saddam ever really did. Briefly he was seen as a hero for invalid reasons but it is the threatened West that gave him larger teeth. The apparatus that glued together a system of loyalty around this aggressive thug of a leader enabled him to continue. His most convincing argument was a personally administered bullet reserved for the closest treachery.

A growing dissatisfaction with the way America was letting the Iraq problem of poverty grow year after year of economic strangulation was starting to reach a new boiling point. The rhetoric on Iraq converged with the war on Terrorism in so much as President Bush was his father's son made the American invasion of Iraq more likely than not. It could not have been different and was not.

Saddam maintained a political imbalance - a bigoted society where the radical majority is suppressed by a conservative minority, brutally, with genocide. The radicalism is that of Shiite Islam that rules in the South-East zone, like in Basra where the British forces are stationed. And the Radical Shiite Cleric. Al Sadr.

The fact that the West's intervention very much changed the landscape for Iran's allies in Iraq is beyond question. Their reaction is a local one, eject the invaders, and it makes sense, unfortunately.

But how can America extract its forces without vast amounts of the world's oil now supporting the Shiite cause? Like Iran, America fought and won a war against the Ba'athists. But it is the Shiite forces that seek to eject the Americans. and this presents the real problem to Bush. By defeating Iraq, the media machine is now gearing up for the conflict to erupt with Iran, probably with Iraq. And thus the Republican party will be briefly supporting the cause of the Ba'athists? Sure hope not. Perhaps that is why he feels it important to put in more troops. And perhaps he has a more strategic Secretary of Defense.

If one thing was managed right in this war is it that Saddam was tried by Iraq rather than an invader. Saddam is dead, gone, finished. His sons are no longer the future. Can Iraq rise above a need to exact endless revenge, draw a line and face what the new future beholds?

America just lost its one unelected leader, who was morned and celebrated like a hero. He was unpopular for pardoning Nixon. America is paying for not facing itself by choosing the wrong path at the wrong time.

If Al Gore was the president, by now oil could be irrelevant as a secondary source of energy. A much better all together solution.