A New Martyr

Editorial
Sunday, 07 January 2007
The Saudi Gazette

Well, well. What a surprise. Saddam Hussein is a martyr. The former dictator who sent thousands of men, women and children to their deaths.
The man, who wasn’t so much as an afterthought following his capture from a spider hole and then put on trial for crimes against humanity, has emerged as a new Arab and Muslim hero. The Iraq government wants to be taken seriously as a sovereign nation. The Bush administration wants to go down in history as responsible for bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East instead of as occupiers. But with each and every bumbling step these two governments take they demonstrate utter incompetence.
By now, thanks to a mobile phone video camera posted on YouTube and countless other websites, the world knows that Saddam Hussein was not executed by an objective and just government but by thugs bent on revenge. President George W. Bush wishes the execution of Saddam Hussein were more “dignified.” And while his administration says it was the Iraq government’s decision on the timing of the hanging, it was the Americans who delivered the shackled prisoner to the gallows.
“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt told a reporter this week. “They turned him into a martyr.”
Now there is the threat of further chaos. Demonstrations have spread from Egypt to India and Pakistan. The Asian countries in particular have long regarded Saddam Hussein as a hero. The circumstances of his death only further solidify their feelings for him. In Lebanon, hundreds of demonstrators have taken to the streets to demonstrate their fury over the manner of his death. What does it say when the people of a country preoccupied with rebuilding its infrastructure following a devastating war take time out to rage against the injustices heaped upon a condemned man?
What should have been a footnote in the Iraq war is fast becoming a central issue. The hopes and dreams of many Sunnis and Shiites to put an end to the bloody sectarian strife have been severely compromised.
And for what? To allow a handful of men to gloat over a dead dictator? The price may be too much.