Saddam is dead and I don’t feel like joking

Happy New Year everyone who followed my journey through Iraq! Especially my secret readers from back home who watched and didn’t comment. I’m glad you were paying attention, even if you didn’t say anything till I got home.

Saddam is dead. I didn’t really have any feelings about that. People have been asking. I just cannot bring myself to care. Saddam had a major impact on the region that will outlast him. Saddam being dead is irrelevant to me because what he did while he was alive is still affecting us all, to one degree or another, and will for decades to come. Saddam was just a little piece in a 12-century jigsaw puzzle filled with hate, ignorance and power struggles.

It is interesting to me that the top search phrase bringing people to my blog right now is “Saddam hanging joke.” I really don’t want to joke about the man. He was an evil human being. I’ve been reading lots of pseudo-journalism about how Saddam spent his last years feeding the birds and talking to his nurse. I’ve read how his family loved him and wanted to say goodbye. And on and on. I have very little sympathy. All I can think is that I wish he’d died sooner. Not because I personally hated the man. I didn’t. I viewed him the same way a cancer patient feels about their disease. They want the mutant cells to be expunged from their bodies.

Iraq continues to be what it has been for so long – a horribly insecure place to be born, a place where life is cheap. Saddam reinforced that lesson over and over during his rule – he made it a part of the culture, and it should be no surprise that in the end, his own life was just as easy to snuff as that of the victims of his regime. If you want to make jokes about Saddam, please, be my guest. Just don’t be surprised if I don’t laugh.

Saddam is gone but his works live on. I won’t laugh about him until Iraqis can. That time is far away.