Official US response to capture of Saddam Hussein: a degrading spectacle

[freethought23]

The official American response to the capture of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein must provoke feelings of deep disgust. It requires a political and media establishment from whom all traces of democratic or humane instinct have been eradicated to react with a display of such ignorance, vindictiveness and sadism.

There is irony in the fact that only a regime as depraved as the current one in Washington could create by its actions a degree of sympathy for Hussein, a right-wing nationalist thug and former ally of the US.

Banner headlines screaming “We’ve got him!,” the innumerable and tedious variations on the “rat” caught in his “hole,” countless news items citing the event as George W. Bush’s “ultimate Christmas present”—what does this all add up to? Victor’s justice, with an unspeakably backward and repellent quality to it.

<snip>

The spectacle of official America celebrating over Saddam Hussein’s capture, with its air of a particularly primitive and bloodthirsty ritual, will horrify and outrage masses of people. It becomes more and more apparent, and this is a relatively recent feature of modern social life, that the American ruling elite inhabits a political and moral universe that is distant and alien from the lives and feelings of the overwhelming majority of humanity, including American humanity. In decent-minded people such goings-on can only evoke feelings of shame, the sense of witnessing something unclean.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/huss-d16.shtml

[aquart]

1. Pretty much how I feel about it.

[Bhaisahab]

2. wilde was right

america, your politico-commercial elite is hell-bent on proving oscar wilde right when he said:
"america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."

[sushi]

3. Have to agree

with you.

[JailBush]

4. It's more complex for me.

I find it hard to justify treating Saddam with any respect. Yet I have to agree with the statement, "There is irony in the fact that . . . Washington could create . . . a degree of sympathy for Hussein . . ."

What is truly disgusting is the extraordinary manipulation of Saddam's capture for the purpose of getting George W. Bush re-elected. Saddam belongs to the Iraqis, Kurds and Iranians and Bush's games intrude into something deeply personal.

On another note, I'm feeling a little smug; I immediately predicted that Saddam Hussein's capture was going to boomerang and turn into an anchor around George Bush's neck, even as the media jackals were pronouncing Bush re-elected.

Way to go, George Bush, you cosmic piece of shit.

[jonoboy]

5. forget Saddam..don't they have any comprehension of Arab sensibilities ??

as evil as he may have been it should have been done with more finesse..after the hullabaloo has died down it will just leave Arabs with that feeling that the US is an oppressor and disregards any thought of treating Arabs with respect.

Even showing him as a washed up has been : the message is.."you got conned by a coward..it need brave US to take him out"

[roguevalley]

6. ditto. i dreaded him being caught for this very reason. god help us if we

ever carp about the geneva convention or humane standards
for our own guys.