These Shameful Events Have Humiliated the Arab World

Saddam's trial and mob execution reeked of western double standards. Yet Iraq's neighbouring states failed to speak out

by Ghada Karmi

The spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution, shown in pornographic detail to the whole world, was deeply shocking to those of us who respect propriety and human dignity. The vengeful Shia mob that was allowed to taunt the man's last moments, and the vicious executioners who released the trapdoor while he was saying his prayers, turned this scene of so-called Iraqi justice into a public lynching. One does not have to be any kind of Saddam sympathiser to be horrified that he should have been executed - and, so obscenely, on the dawn of Islam's holy feast of Eid al-Adha, which flagrantly defies religious practice and was an affront to the Islamic world.

What was the executioners' hurry? Why was Saddam condemned for one of his lesser crimes, ignoring the far larger ones for which many of his victims had sought retribution? In their unseemly haste to kill him, the judges ended up looking mean-minded, bloodthirsty and vengeful, while Saddam retained a dignity to the end that drew the reluctant admiration of many of his enemies.

It was always clear that Saddam's fate was sealed from the moment US forces "got 'im", in Paul Bremer's tasteless phrase. He was to be used as a trophy of a mindless and catastrophic war, to redeem America's dented image. But it was also essential to stop him revealing secrets about the west's past enthusiasm in supporting and arming his regime. Hence he was tried on the relatively minor charge of killing 148 people in the village of Dujail, after a plot to assassinate him. Far better to put him away safely for that rather than risk his exposing western hypocrisy, treachery and double-dealing.

For the Arab world, this has been a shameful, humiliating event that underlines its total surrender to western diktat. The execution was carried out under the auspices of a foreign occupying power, and with a clear western message: we give ourselves the right to invade a sovereign Arab state and remove its leader because he offends us; we think you Arabs are incapable of sorting out your own affairs in accordance with our interests, so we will do it for you.

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