..THINE ENEMIES.
I have mixed feelings when I see the current most-used photograph of Saddam resilient on TV.
The crumpled, sad looking man sitting there behind the bar reminds you of the active ruler of Iraq but you wonder if he could now lift a rifle – much less fire a charge into the air one handedly as was his usual mode of showing power and leadership qualities.
Now we see a crumpled little man who still has an ability to contend and he will most likely explain his actions at length in the forthcoming trials wherever and whenever they take place.
The somber man we see sitting there appears more or less as the shell of the man we once viewed as a active person, somewhat brash and he perhaps lacking in some of the finer, more diplomatic stances usually found in many rulers of his type. Whatever he had in power, prestige, wealth and a following came to a sudden end, I think, when he chose to be hidden away in a narrow, little hole in the ground instead of engaging in a showy last stand action – either genuine or faked – against his encroaching enemies.
To b e dragged from such a petty hiding place marks the change which had come over man when he agreed to such confinement. He chose to go out as a whimper albeit a live one. He Iraqi people were content to tear down statues of their former dictator which I count as a mark in their favor – far better than the actions of an Italian mob who beat and battered Il Duce and his mistress naked and upside down from the beams of an auto service station by the Italian roadside.
In the months ahead we , or someone, will be holding do with the prisoner. It has not yet been been decided if it is something the newly constituted Iraqi courts should decide or if we ought to undertake such a task. It is not going to be an easy task for either party. Saddam himself must be wondering if he will be judged by people from a Christian country or his own land. He certainly must be weighing possibilities either way. “Love thine enemies” is not a teaching of his cultural background and may seem, to him, the ultimate in stupidity, but he is, I should think pondering that point day upon day. He could be exiled rather than executed, but where does one send an exiled man today?
I have a strong feeling we will be better off if we insist that the Iraqi people decide what the future of their deposed ruler is to be.
A.L.M. December 27, 2004 (c454wds]
