Was Saddam's death dignified?
Stephen Moss
Tuesday January 2, 2007
The Guardian
On the surface, of course not. An ageing man with a grey beard stands, looking bemused, beneath a makeshift gibbet while his enemies taunt him. As he is saying a final prayer, the trapdoor is suddenly released and he plunges to his death, a brief expression of surprise registering on his face as the floor gives way. All this is filmed. Twice. Once as an official video that ends just before the door is opened. But also in a clandestine, unexpurgated videophone version now doing the rounds on the internet.
YouTube has it, of course, and in many respects it is desperately depressing. For a start, based on viewer/voyeur comments, the site has given the 2min 36sec video a four-star rating. How does that translate? "Worth a look", perhaps, but not necessarily "Don't miss". Then there is the talkboard, full of juvenile abuse: "HOLY SHIT!!", "He had it coming", "Couldn't they have tortured him too?". Deaths surely don't come any less dignified than this.
And yet, if a dictator has to die, this would surely be the way he would choose. One last stage, a worldwide audience at his command. Saddam's final exchanges with his hooded, gangsterish executioners are already being mythologised. "Go to hell," one is reported to have said. "The hell that is Iraq?" Saddam supposedly snaps back. A brilliant riposte from a man about to die.
Thus are famous last words born. This could be his epitaph, exemplifying his defiance and condemning his lynching party, only one of whom has the decency to call for silence. "Please stop, the man is being executed, please stop." The man. Not the monster, the butcher, the tyrant. Saddam's killers have achieved the impossible: they have made us feel sympathy for him, for his grace under pressure. There may not have been dignity in the dying, but there was courage. A five-star death.
