The Beatific Smile of the Newly Dead

Against my better judgment, I watched that jerky cell phone video of Saddamn Hussein's hanging last week. Overall, it was highly distasteful, and showed just how much the United States and Iraqi "government" have bollixed up that country's future.

Saddam, as Don Imus said, "Went out like Jimmy Cagney." He was defiant, yet seemingly calm at the end. And the face, flushed with the last blood of life, looked almost happy as it dangled grotesquely from the end of the hangman's noose. His glassy eyes were half closed, and he almost seemed to be smiling, like a sailor might smile when viewing the shores of his home port after a long sea voyage.

I was discussing the whole thing with Clarence. He brought up how Saddam was a tyrant and mass murderer. "That's true," I replied, "but one man's bloody tyrant is another man's martyr." I reminded Clarence that like Braveheart, Saddamn had refused drugs before his execution. And like that famed Scottish hero, his hands had been bloodied by the deaths of the innocent.

History is not always fiction written by the victors. At least--not the short-term victors. Sometimes centuries will pass before the collective memory of mankind sorts out who were the heroes and who the villains.

Just my thoughts for today.