Thoughts on Saddam's final fate

The trial and execution of Saddam Hussein may have an effect on precedents for international law applied to heads of state for crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide.

But there is not likely to be much of an immediate effect in Iraq. The sectarian violence is so bad already that the hanging of Saddam can hardly make things worse. And though the Kurds and Shi'ites who comprise more than 80 percent of Iraq's population may feel that justice was done for Saddam's mass murders, there is nothing about his execution that could alter their anxieties about the current horrors of ethnic and sectarian conflict.

As for Saddam, he seemed to be approaching his end with an unflagging attachment to the power of the big lie. The farewell letter from him that his lawyers released this week said: "To the great nation, to the people of our country, and humanity: Many of you have known the writer of this letter to be faithful, honest, caring for others, wise, of sound judgment, just, decisive, careful with the wealth of the people and the state... and that his heart is big enough to embrace all without discrimination."

This final self-portrait would be comic if its author had not been responsible for enormous human suffering. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis were murdered by Saddam and his accomplices. And Saddam fostered a large part of the sectarian vengefulness that has now been loosed on Iraqis. When he addressed himself to "the great nation," he meant the Arab nation -- an ideological construct he used to justify his Ba'athist police-state. The concept of the Arab nation excludes Iraq's Kurds, who are not Arab. And later in his letter, when he referred to "the strangers who are carrying the Iraqi citizenship, whose hearts are empty or filled with the hatred that was planted in them by Iran," Saddam was insinuating that Iraq's Shi'ites are not real Iraqis and not real Arabs, but traitors to the Arab nation who are loyal only to Iran.

Some unregenerate Ba'athists may mourn Saddam's execution, but they will be a distinct minority. After all, there are still apologists for Hitler and Stalin.

Alan Berger is an editorial writer for the Globe.