NYT: Images of Hanging Make Hussein a Martyr to Many

[kskiska]

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Jan. 5 — In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration and awe.

On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

“No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

(snip)

“Suddenly we forgot that he was a dictator and that he killed thousands of people,” said Roula Haddad, 33, a Lebanese Christian. “All our hatred for him suddenly turned into sympathy, sympathy with someone who was treated unjustly by an occupation force and its collaborators.”

Just a month ago Mr. Hussein was widely dismissed as a criminal who deserved the death penalty, even if his trial was seen as flawed. Much of the Middle East reacted with a collective shrug when he was found guilty of crimes against humanity in November.

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/06/world/middleeast/06arabs.html?hp&ex=1168146000&en=c2e8e35861a46754&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[ReadTomPaine]

1. Virtually everyone involved has been warned about this possibility for years

The handling of this situation, like every other aspect of the Iraq quagmire, has been a disaster.

[Psephos]

2. Whatever. There were Mussolini and Hitler cultists, too, after their deaths.

Throw Ceausescu, OBL, al-Zarqawi, even Idi Amin into that pile, as long as you're at it. Wasn't that long ago we had to listen to B.S. about Arafat, too, while his body was kept alive in that bizarre episode in Paris. Now I hardly even hear his name. Life goes on.

*Of course* the Sunnis will use Saddam as a symbol of their dignity in the face of Shiite barbarianism. (How conveniently they forget what they themselves did to the Shiites when the Baathists were running the show.) The longer Saddam sleeps in his dirt bed, the shorter their memories will grow.

Bottom line: Saddam was a political figure, and the politicization of his death cannot be avoided.

My opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

[Kagemusha]

3. Points taken but, the Shiites and the US still messed up BAD here.

Short of the hangman's noose breaking, there's not a whole lot that could have gone wrong, that didn't, in order to maximize sympathy for Saddam, who was well understood to be a bad man undeserving of such sympathy. It was a hand badly played.

Your view that there would be politicization regardless is not one that I can dispute, however. I just fail to see why we had to make that process so damn *easy*.

[Psephos]

5. Your point is well-taken, too n/t

[anotherdrew]

4. gee... "no one could have predicted this" n/t

xcept all the people who did