Sometimes, when you hunt a monster, you become one (my take on Saddam)

[The Straight Story]

I have no problem killing someone in self defense of myself or my family. Would not bother me in the slightest and I would lose no sleep over it. In the heat of battle, you do what must be done.

Today was not the heat of battle.

I remember two fine men who waged war, Generals Lee and Grant. Hundreds of thousands killed, terrible conditions for prisoners of war, it was all a mess.

But in the end, they rode their separate ways.

Saddam was no Lee to be sure. And in the end, the Iraqi government made the choice to hang their old leader.

Had Saddam died in battle, there would be no discussion such as we see. He did not. And his captors chose to do to him what they feared he would have done to them. They killed him.

At what point does one step above the fray, above that which once was and aspire to that which we hope to be?

Letting Saddam live, and serve life in prison, would have shown a step up the evolutionary scale. That the hate which drove him to kill had not infected others.

To show others that indeed we do value life, even when it is one that has been so horribly led. To show that we are not the same as those we rail against.

Had saddam done the things to my family that he had to others, I would have lived my life trying to put a bullet in his head. I would have become the monster I wanted to kill, I would have sought justice.

Some tonight have that justice. Others have an empty feeling that we became what we have just seen killed.

He was no longer a threat, he was...contained (an interesting term from the old days and our relationship with Iraq).

Saddam punished others with death for his own sick reasons. But reasons to him which made some sense. We punished today for our own reasons, with death.

He is no better than those who meted out this sentence. And in one small way they are no better either. Each killed based on their criteria - and while one may be better than the other in moral terms, they still both end up with the same end. Someone was executed.

He made his choices. He played the game, and in his region of the world he knew what the outcome could well be. And in a way he helped foster that mindset. And now he is a victim of his own success.

He created a monster, and those that sprang from his world stayed a monster on some levels.

The monster was hunted, and the hunters became the monster under different guise.

The executions did not stop in Iraq when Saddam left, they just got a new label.

And we got yet another corpse.