Saddam Hussein and Capital’s Moral Defeat

Knowing you are about to be hung by your enemies following a fraudulent trial, at the behest of foreign invaders who have destroyed your country, would tax the moral resources of a saint. Or, in this case, a martyr. Saddam Hussein demonstrated how to die with courage, honour and dignity.

Ordinarily, at an execution, the condemned man is hooded or blindfolded, to hide his shame, to spare him sight of his own death rushing towards him. But Saddam forewent this. He stood bare-faced, facing death, not hiding from it. His constrained body emphasized the expressions of his face. It showed no sign of fear, or submission to the power about to kill him. His eyes did not stare into the void. He listened attentively to what his executioner said to him. He is quick-witted to the end, rising above the verbal barbs of his tormentors.

It was his executioners who were hooded. They could see, but not be seen. Ostensibly, this was for fear of reprisals. And yet they stood and moved furtively, like guilty men. The arrangement of their bodies lacked order. They moved as if their hoods were to spare us the sight of their wretchedness.

If ever a death symbolized the spirit of resistance in Iraq, this was it. Saddam Hussein, surrounded by hostile men, about to be lynched, refused to be terrorized. America lifts up its skirts at the mere idea of danger and sees terror around every corner. It’s the old story about the American State: militarily strong, morally weak.

This was the death of a man of exceptionally strong will and courage. It was a death that shamed all those who slandered how he lived. Is this the behavior of a man who would hide in a hole in the ground to evade capture by the Americans? It gave the lie to that piece of propaganda.

The entire weight of that wave of Anglo-American moral superiority crashed down on Saddam Hussein and the whole world saw he did not flinch. That was the moral defeat of these forces, right there, staring us in the face.

There is a precedent. An occupying power hands over a man to his enemies who taunt, mock and then execute him. Where have we heard this before? Bush and Blair should know the answer—two thousand years ago in Roman-occupied Palestine. Jesus was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the guilty.

For what or whom was Saddam Hussein sacrificed? Certainly not for what he did to Iraqis—for that Bush and Blair would hang a hundred times over. He was hung because he was unafraid of the West’s military might and because his very existence was a moral threat to Anglo-Israeli-American interests.

But this gambit backfired. Saddam Hussein’s resistance broke that moral wave. The tide changed, returned to from whence it came, and is rising. Resistance too has come home, to every city in the West and the spirit of insurrection is growing. Those responsible for the carnage in Iraq face their own reckoning.

Image via Wikipedia

Image via Wikipedia