Another very good piece in the New York Times today -- an analysis of the fallout among the Sunnis of what many agree was a poorly handled execution of Saddam. Sabrina Tavernise writes:
The hanging was hasty. Laws governing its timing were bypassed, and the guards charged with keeping order in the chamber instead disrupted it, shouting Shiite militia slogans. It was a degrading end for a vicious leader, and an ominous beginning for the new Iraq. The Bush administration has already scaled back its hopes for a democracy here. But as the Iraqi government has become ever more set on protecting its Shiite constituency, often at the expense of the Sunni minority, the goal of stopping the sectarian war seems to be slipping out of reach.
The article goes on to examine the effect of the "degrading end" of Saddam on his fellow Sunnis.
The degradation doesn't, of course, apply to Saddam Hussein, but to the Maliki government and to the Shia majority. The video of the execution "left the impression that the government cared more for revenge than for justice, Sunnis said." And that's bound to reverberate.
“Either it’s terrible incompetence or it’s an act of revenge — a vendetta,” said Adnan Pachachi, a respected Sunni whose political career began long before Mr. Hussein took power. “That was the impression people had.”
Tavernise reports that there hasn't been much reaction from the Sunni insurgency. Juan Cole writes today that "although the US press is reporting that there weren't many demonstrations by angry Sunni Arabs and those were subdued, Aljazeera is providing videotape of several demonstrations, in places like Dhuluiya as well as in Bagdad, that look to me substantial." He reports:
Al-Hayat is saying that some Sunni Arabs who viewed the videotape of Saddam's execution are suggesting that he was turned over to the Shiite Mahdi Army for implementation of his sentence. Al-Maliki will now, the paper says, redouble his efforts to reach out to former Baathists. The "debaathification" commission will be disbanded or much weakened. There are even hints that the former Baathists will be exonerated and former Baath officers will be allowed to return to the military.
What about the US's role? It seems as though the American military really wanted to do the right thing. But so much of what we've been responsible for in Iraq -- from incompetent planning, to Abu Ghraib, to our inability to deal with the insurgency -- has brought discredit on us. I doubt we'll be given credit for any improvement in Iraq if, indeed, there were to be a change. Meanwhile, according to Juan Cole, there's an eerie amount of violent reaction to Saddam's "degrading" execution in India and Pakistan and protest from Palestine, Egypt, Jordan and Libya.
Chris Floyd reads the New York Times account of the execution and has a different reaction:
This is a very curious story. Some of it is probably true, some of it is patently false – and all of it is a massive, panicky CYA job by American officials. However, through the heavy fog of this assemblage of spin, it seems fairly obvious what has really happened: the same group of dim-witted fools, ideological cranks and violent sectarians who have driven the whole misbegotten enterprise in Iraq came up with yet another plan that they thought was a great idea. But as always, it turned out to be a botched job that has made a hellish situation even worse.
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