And another thing....
There's this article about what Saddam did in the first days of his reign of terror that is illuminating and meaningful in the context of arguing that he is not worthy of any pity. Ultimately, to hell with Saddam, literally and figuratively. But another thing about the article, though, is the bit about him taping executions and sending them around the country as a warning to all who would oppose him. Quite effective, I imagine. I find it funny, then, that we're not watching Saddam's hanging on TV or on mainstream internet sites. Even Drudge is shying away. I don't want to see it, don't get me wrong. I find those real death videos - you know Faces of Death et al - deeply disturbing and soul-crushing. But it just seems somehow hypocritical of us - the tough-guy, John Wayne type Americans - to be so squeamish about the realities of the world. We want to preside over the world as the moral authority and the ones that the world should model themselves after and yet we can't even take the images of our own American soldiers coming home in body bags. Have you seen even one funeral of an American soldier? There have been 3,000 of them, why aren't we allowed to know about them? Because we need to be protected. Maybe we would be less apt to shop with reckless abandon if we felt a little more uncertain about life and more certain about death.