Wanted: Dead

Saddam Hussein's hanging was a foregone conclusion once he was captured three years ago "" for two reasons. First, there was never a question that the man was a tyrant, responsible for many summary killings and endless brutality. And second, because the US was hell-bent on delivering something that has elements of what is usually called "victor's justice". The judge for his trial was changed at least once, and the man who eventually handed out the death sentence had reportedly declared that there was no need for a trial, the deposed president should be hanged straightaway. The choice of a Sunni festive day to carry out the sentence is in itself an act of in-your-face triumphalism; and if it is true that the hanging has been filmed, it would be a macabre act unworthy of any civilised country.

Naturally, these factors take away from the mandatory impartiality and essential disinterestedness of due process "" not least because they were entirely unnecessary. Saddam wrought extreme havoc over a quarter century of absolute rule, and it should have been possible to bend over backwards to make concessions to him in the judicial process and still prove him guilty of crimes deserving capital punishment. In the manner that the whole process has been carried through, Saddam's hanging will create new wounds in Iraq, and possibly rebound on the present Iraqi government and on the US forces in that benighted country. The deposed president may not become a martyr in anyone's eyes (as he had declared in one of those assertions that showed his distance from reality), and it probably goes without saying that the majority of Iraqis will be happy that he is dead "" the Sunnis are a small minority, after all. But the US and the government that it has facilitated in Baghdad emerge with no credit.

The shortcomings in the judicial process should not prevent acknowledgement that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein. He kept his country at war or in a state of strife and tension through most of his 24-year-rule. There were eight years of fighting with Iran (1980-88), starting almost immediately after Saddam had seized absolute power in 1979; that was followed by unprovoked aggression against Kuwait in 1990, resulting in the first Gulf war in 1991, and the sequel to that was a decade and more of UN sanctions. None of this helped his people; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died in needless fighting, thousands of Kurds and Shiites were killed in internal purges, and there was large-scale deprivation because of the sanctions. All this in a secular, oil-rich country with an equally rich civilisational past, one which could have been a model for other countries in the region.

But even after acknowledging all this, it is hard to turn away from other known facts: for instance, the greater havoc caused in Iraq by another needless war which is now in its fourth year, a war launched with false pretexts and now being continued with ill-defined objectives. There are the crimes committed at the abu Ghraib prison with the sanction of the then US defence secretary. There is the history of past US support for Saddam because he was battling cleric-dominated Iran. And there is the contrasting treatment meted out to another long-serving despot in the region who also terrorised his people "" the Shah of Iran "" who when deposed (ironically, in the same year that Saddam seized power) was given a visa to enter the US. The message is clear: the issue is not the despotism, but whose side you are on.