SADDAM HANGS (Mark Steyn)

Just in time for Eid, the Iraqis decided Saddam Hussein was one old acquaintance who really should be forgot. Despite The New York Times’ protests that it’s all been too rushed, it’s three years since the mass murderer was pulled from his spider hole. Here’s what I wrote in The Spectator in December 2003, outlining the possible approaches to the trial:

Swift execution: good. Playing Scrabble with Slobo in the prison library for the next 20 years: bad.

Bet on Bush and the Iraqis to get their way. As for whether Iraq has a justice system under which Saddam can be tried, I suggest we look to the great King of Babylonia, Hammurabi, whose Code of Laws, the world's first written legal code circa 1780 BC, stands up pretty well. I'm not a Babylonian legal scholar but I note that Saddam's digging of a subterranean hiding place in his hut appears to be in clear breach of Law No. 21:

If any one break a hole into a house, he shall be put to death before that hole and be buried.

Well, it didn’t quite go that way, but it was close enough, and better than the Hague-Slobo model. And to have convicted, sentenced and executed the dictator is a signal accomplishment for the new Iraq. When I was in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, shortly after the war, a young boy showed me his schoolbook. It was like my textbooks at his age - full of doodles and squiggles and amusing additions to the illustrations. With one exception: the many pages bearing pictures of Saddam were in pristine condition. Even a bored schoolboy doesn't get so careless that he forgets where not to draw the line. When the cowardly thug emerged from his hole, it was a rare moment: in the fetid stability of the Middle East, how often do you get to see a big-time dictator looking like some boxcar hobo and meekly submitting to a lice inspection by an American soldier? Not everyone was happy about it. As I wrote in the Speccie:

Jihan Ajlouni, a 24-year-old Palestinian university student, reacted to Saddam’s capture by warning: “We say to all the traitors and collaborators: don’t rush to celebrate, because there are millions of Saddams in the Arab world.”

Really? Millions of smelly wimps with ratty hair living in holes in the ground? That could cause massive subsidence in the Tikrit area, particularly if they surrender all at once.

But, of course, Mr Ajlouni is wrong. The West Bank aside, his fellow Arabs aren’t that nuts. When the Western world’s Ajlouni Left reprimand the Americans for sticking Saddam on TV with a tongue depressor, they’re worried it will make the Arabs feel humiliated. “I feel extremely humiliated,” agreed the Egyptian writer Sayyid Nassar. “By shaving his beard, a symbol of virility in Iraq and in the Arab world, the Americans committed an act that symbolises humiliation in our region.”

You should feel humiliated. It is humiliating when you invest your pride in a total loser. For the Palestinians, who never met a loser they weren’t dumb enough to fall for (the Mufti, Nasser, Yasser), Saddam still has an honoured place in the Pantheon of Glorious Has-Beens. But for millions of Iraqis a monster has shrivelled away into a smelly bum too pathetic even to use his pistol to enjoy the martyrdom he urged on others.

That’s easy for me to say. The reality is that, as long as he was alive, there was always the possibility that he would return. When a dictator has exercised the total control over his subjects that Saddam did, his hold on them can only end with his death. A day after his capture, I wrote in the Telegraph:

Saddam, of course, attempted to reclaim his stature, but, in his current position, opportunities are few and far between. In his first interrogation at Baghdad Airport, he was asked if he’d like a glass of water, and replied: “If I drink water I will have to urinate and how can I urinate when my people are in bondage?” If there’s a statue left of him in Iraq, they should chisel that on the plinth.

That’s still a good idea. My old newspaper in London headlined its editorial “Justice For A Mass Murderer”. There can never be “justice” for murderous dictators – there’s simply too much blood. But there can be retribution, and a final line drawn under a dark chapter of history as he’s shovelled into his grave.

He was not without his style. He liked his Quality Street toffees and his Sinatra albums. In the early Nineties, when the Prince of Wales ventured some mild criticism of His Execellency, Saddam gave a soundbite to his son’s newspaper declaring that “we in Iraq do not pay any attention to the likes of the British Crown Prince” on the grounds that he’s “a notorious playboy well known in the cellars of the night and in whorehouses throughout Europe”, which is pretty cute. In the oddest development of his career, he decided late in life he was a novelist and pumped out a bodice-ripper called Zabibah And The King, an allegory of Iraqi history in which he was the king and Zabibah was Iraq, and getting it night and day. It was, oddly enough, a bestseller in Iraq, and was subsequently turned into a musical – a real-life version of Larry Gelbart’s old joke that he hoped Hitler was alive and on the road with a musical in trouble. Saddam was very much alive and on the road with a musical, but it wasn’t in trouble. Au contraire, it did boffo biz. I would love to have seen it: the critics said it did for camels what Cats did for cats. After his third novel was published in 2002, I decided to have a go at writing a Saddam blockbuster myself. This is from Mark Steyn From Head To Toe , and seems oddly pertinent in the final hour of an evil man’s wretched life:

Following the best-selling Zabibah And The King, The Impregnable Castle, and Men And A City, we’re proud to present an exclusive sneak preview of Saddam Hussein’s fourth great allegorical romance! Saddam is the winner of the 2002 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction for last week’s reply to the United Nations (“We hereby declare before you that Iraq is clear of all nuclear, chemical and biological weapons”). An accomplished wordsmith in the tradition of Sheikh Spear, George bin Ard Shaw and Louisa May al-Cott, Saddam has given us exclusive rights to this excerpt from his forthcoming novel. (As in his previous allegorical romance, the pliant female Zabibah represents Iraq and the stern King represents everyone’s favourite dictator.)

The moral legitimacy of the execution of Saddam Hussein.

TYRANNICIDE AND THE CATHOLIC TEACHINGS

Excerpts from the Catholic Encyclopedia

Tyrannicide literally is the killing of a tyrant, and usually is taken to mean the killing of a tyrant by a private person for the common good. There are two classes of tyrants whose circumstances are widely apart -- tyrants by usurpation and tyrants by oppression. A tyrant by usurpation (tyrannus in titula) is one who unjustly displaces or attempts to displace the legitimate supreme ruler, and he can be considered in the act of usurpation or in subsequent peaceful possession of the supreme power. A tyrant by oppression (tyrannus in regimine) is a supreme ruler who uses his power arbitrarily and oppressively.

I. TYRANT BY USURPATION

While actually attacking the powers that be, a tyrant by usurpation is a traitor acting against the common weal, and, like any other criminal, may be put to death by legitimate authority. If possible, the legitimate authority must use the ordinary forms of law in condemning the tyrant to death, but if this is not possible, it can proceed informally and grant individuals a mandate to inflict the capital punishment. St. Thomas (In II Sent., d. XLIV, Q. ii, a. 2), Suarez (Def. fidei, VI, iv, 7), and the majority of authorized theologians say that private individuals have a tacit mandate from legitimate authority to kill the usurper when no other means of ridding the community of the tyrant are available.

II. TYRANT BY OPPRESSION

Looking on a tyrant by oppression as a public enemy, many authorities claimed for his subjects the right of putting him to death in defense of the common good. Amongst these were John of Salisbury in the twelfth century (Polycraticus III, 15; IV, 1; VIII, 17), and John Parvus (Jehan Petit) in the fifteenth century. The Council of Constance (1415) condemned as contrary to faith and morals the following proposition:

"Any vassal or subject can lawfully and meritoriously kill, and ought to kill, any tyrant. He may even, for this purpose, avail himself of ambushes, and wily expressions of affection or of adulation, notwithstanding any oath or pact imposed upon him by the tyrant, and without waiting for the sentence or order of any judge." (Session XV)

Subsequently a few Catholics defended, with many limitations and safeguards, the right of subjects to kill a tyrannical ruler. Foremost amongst these was the Spanish Jesuit Mariana. In his book, "De rege et regis institutione" (Toledo, 1599), he held that people ought to bear with a tyrant as long as possible, and to take action only when his oppression surpassed all bounds. They ought to come together and give him a warning; this being of no avail they ought to declare him a public enemy and put him to death. If no public judgment could be given, and if the people were unanimous, any subject might, if possible, kill him by open, but not by secret means. The book was dedicated to Philip III of Spain and was written at the request of his tutor Garcias de Loaysa, who afterwards became Bishop of Toledo. It was published at Toledo in the printing-office of Pedro Rodrigo, printer to the king, with the approbation of Pedro de Oñ, Provincial of the Mercedarians of Madrid, and with the permission of Stephen Hojeda, visitor of the Society of Jesus in the Province of Toledo (see JUAN MARIANA).

Great theologians of the Church like St. Thomas (II-II, Q. xlii, a.2), Suarez (Def. fidei, VI, iv, 15), and Bañez, O.P. (De justitia et jure, Q. lxiv, a. 3), permitted rebellion against oppressive rulers when the tyranny had become extreme and when no other means of safety were available. This merely carried to its logical conclusion the doctrine of the Middle Ages that the supreme ruling authority comes from God through the people for the public good. As the people immediately give sovereignty to the ruler, so the people can deprive him of his sovereignty when he has used his power oppressively.

Many authorities, e.g. Suarez (Def. fiedei, VI, iv, 18), held that the State, but not private persons, could, if necessary, condemn the tyrant to death. In recent times Catholic authors, for the most part, deny that subjects have the right to rebel against and depose an unjust ruler, except in the case when the ruler was appointed under the condition that he would lose his power if he abused it. In proof of this teaching they appeal to the Syllabus of Pius IX, in which this proposition is condemned: "It is lawful to refuse obedience to legitimate princes, and even to rebel" (prop. 63). While denying the right of rebellion in the strict sense whose direct object is the deposition of the tyrannical ruler, many Catholic writers, such as Crolly, Cathrein, de Bie, Zigliara, admit the right of subjects not only to adopt an attitude of passive resistance against unjust laws, but also in extreme cases to assume a state of active defensive resistance against the actual aggression of a legitimate, but oppressive ruler.

Many of the Reformers were more or less in favour of tyrannicide. Luther held that the whole community could condemn the tyrant to death (Sämmtliche Werke", LXII, Frankfort-on-the-Main and Erlangen, 1854, 201, 206). Melanchthon said that the killing of a tyrant is the most agreeable offering that man can make to God (Corp. Ref., III, Halle, 1836, 1076).

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