Hussein

Saddam Hussein was hanged last night.

I decline to worry about procedural issues in his trial—it sounded very much as though he was allowed to make his case freely, Ramsey Clark to the contrary. How our country wound up with a man like Clark in a position of responsibility is still a mystery to me

Nor do I worry that this will infuriate his supporters. I’d guess that what little effect this hanging will have will be a short pulse of vengeance violence followed by a small resignation decline. Most of the fighting is driven by current issues, not a fallen leader from yesterday.

Nor do I get my shorts in a knot about the death penalty, as though it were somehow excessive for such a tyrant.

Our family wasn’t bothering to follow the case in great detail. Not our tyrant, not our courts, not our laws. I assumed that he’d be found guilty, and presumably hanged for his crimes; so there wasn’t going to be much surprise about it.

But it was odd to see the headline last night and feel slightly sad. When Ford died I thought of Antony’s “the good that men do lives after them,” as Ford entered into rest. But with Hussein there is no such hope. He made his bed, he must lie in it; may the Lord have mercy on his misbegotten soul. The world is a better place without him: a terrifying verdict on a life.

Tyrants like him are a dime a dozen, of course. He happened to be ruling a rich and powerful country, and lived long enough to thoroughly identify himself with the state. Mugabe has to work harder to get the same corpse count, ruling a poorer and less easily controlled country. I could undertake to find equally brutal characters in my own neighborhood, though they’d lack Hussein’s cunning and ambition—and therefore his scope of action, and therefore his crimes. We must only judge the deeds, not the heart, and by that appropriate standard my brutal neighbors are relatively innocent and Hussein exceedingly criminal.

We did not remark on the headlines in the paper this morning. My youngest son is fascinated with a Star Trek episode he’s seen a few times: Encounter at Farpoint. Two weeks ago he built a Lego courtroom like that used in the show, studded with Lego and Bionicle figures. This morning he built a gallows for it.