George Packer, New Yorker writer and author of "The Assassins' Gate," talks to NPR about the execution of Saddam Hussein.
NPR: We've been looking and listening to the news, looking at all the old pictures, the toppling of the statue of Saddam, people leaping onto it... Wouldn't you expect there to still be some of that kind of feeling left in Iraq, and not just among the Shiites? This was a tyrant. So many people died in Iraq as the result of Saddam's reign.
George Packer: I know that millions of Iraqis feel that way so today is going to be a day of vengeful joy for a lot of Iraqis. The thing that strikes me is Saddam falling through the gallows to his death is an utterly just act. But the whole context for it and the sort of historical meaning of it feels wrong to me today. This is not going to be an act of justice that's going to lead to some kind of national reckoning with the past and therefore an ability to move on. Instead, it's simply going to be swept into what Iraq has become -- a divided, violent country in which groups will choose to read the execution of Saddam according to group identity rather than Iraqi identity. So it seems to me there's no Iraqi state or nation today that is really capable of executing Saddam in a way that does reflect Iraq rather than the groups in Iraq that were his victims.
NPR: Do you think this means there will be any difference to the Sunni insurgency with Saddam gone? He's not been obviously leading anything because he's been in prison for three years. But the symbol of Saddam? Does that make a difference?
GP: I don't think there's going to be any real tactical change in the Sunni insurgency. I do think it's simply going to deepen the sense among Sunnis -- including those who, while Saddam was ruling over them, despised him completely -- that they had been singled out and that this is Shiite and Kurdish vengence rather than Iraqi justice. That's going to be the perception among even some secular Sunnis who feel persecuted these days because of the death squads and the fact that the Iraqi government is dominated by Shia and Kirds.
NPR: Do you think this is going to be seen as something the Americans are pushing for, that it took place so quickly because that's what the Americans wanted?
GP: It may be seen that way, but I think the opposite is true. From what I've read, American officials were stunned at the speed of this. It was really the Iraqi government that was pushing to get it done so quickly. And it's ironic that Saddam has been executed for killing 148 civilians from the town of Dujail. The fact that he killed hundreds of thousands of Shia Kurds and other Iraqis in great massacres of the late '80's and early '90's will go unpunished because those trials which were underway have to be completed without the defendant. So in a way they've executed Saddam for one of his smallest crimes and left the largest crimes untried and unjudged.
NPR: Do you think that's going to make... how will the people who's crimes are unjudged... how will they feel about that, do you think?
GP: Well, I think some Kurds may feel that they wanted to see the [trial about the genocide] against the Kurdish people carried through. But I also know from experience that the level of hatred against Saddam is so intense, especially among Kurds and Shia, that the fact that he's dead may well satisfy them. They may well feel it was too good for him. I heard accounts of how they would like to see Saddam executed. It was pretty gory indeed! And this may well seem as though it happened too secretly and too mercifully -- that's the level of hatred he engendered.
NPR: Why do you think government moved in that way?
GP: I think that although the trial was not entirely a political trial -- there were some procedures of justice and we have to recognize that -- it was politicized, especially in the speed with which he was executed. I think the al-Maliki government wanted to have Saddam on their record, as having been executed on their watch. They wanted to do it as quickly as possible in order to gain the benefit of it. They didn't want Saddam hanging over their heads...
