The hanging of Saddam Hussein has infuriated Comment is Free contributor Ghada Karmi so much she’s attacking the event from every possible angle – including those that are mutually contradictory:
Saddam was held in US custody right up to the end and only handed over to the Iraqis for the distasteful deed, his body whisked away immediately afterwards by a US helicopter for a hasty burial. Yet this was billed as an independent decision of a “sovereign state”, as if any such thing were possible under occupation.
Pah! Every Stopper worth his or her salt knows that there are no such things as ‘independent acts’ where a Government of a country has foreign troops on its soil.
I don’t agree with that confidentally asserted position – think of Japan or Germany for just a couple of recent examples – but at least it is a political position.
It’s a shame therefore that Ghada shoots it down in flames by typing the sentence that follows it.
The fact that this was the act of an Iraqi government dominated by Saddam’s Shia enemies made the final outcome a foregone conclusion.
Oh dear. You either take one position and stick to it in an argument or you end up looking desperate for ammunition.
Ghada also gets Saddam’s constitutional position wrong:
Whatever else Saddam was, he was the constitutionally recognised Iraqi president
Not since 28 June 2004 he wasn’t.