Death feels hollow

Ellis Henican

December 31, 2006

They danced over the body.

The men in black ski masks danced over the body of Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti, as the dead Iraqi dictator lay motionless on the ground.

His eyes were closed.

His neck was twisted at an angle unnaturally sharp.

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He was dressed entirely in black except for the white undershirt peeking from beneath his gray beard.

He was 69 years old.

The execution of Saddam Hussein was supposed to bring joy and catharsis, far beyond the dancing at the gallows. It was supposed to tell the Iraqis that this man who had so brutalized them was finally no threat at all. It was supposed to show the world that, despite the anarchy that Iraq now has become, America and the Iraqis we support still can achieve something -- the killing of this single, hated man.

From his ranch in Texas, President Bush called the execution of the tyrant "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy."

So how come this carefully orchestrated hanging still felt so awkward and unsatisfying when it finally occurred?

Was it the refusal of the butcher to wear a hood, forcing us to see his face as the noose was slid firmly over his head?

Was it that fat yellow rope and its dreadful place in our own nation's bloody history?

Was it the circus that the trial had been and the swiftness of the dismissed appeal?

It was all of that and more that made the long-awaited death of Saddam feel so oddly hollow.

It was the choppily edited, grainy videotape, playing over and over on worldwide television.

It was the refusal of even our closest ally, the British, to participate in the trial and capital punishment, carried out by Iraqis with our close supervision.

It was the timing of the hanging, coming at this holiday season for Christians, Muslims and Jews, near the end of the deadliest month of the year for U.S. troops in Iraq, as the tally of American war dead closes in on 3,000.

And yes, it was the men in coordinated windbreakers and ski masks, performing their grim task anonymously, then dancing and singing over the body they had just helped to kill.

Iraq's national security adviser explained that last point as well as it could be explained. "That is the natural reaction," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie said. "These people have lost loved ones."

Let them have their dance. It will end soon enough.

The broader, lingering sadness comes from the fact that killing this man, awful as he was, will do nothing to stop the killing of the next one.

Or the one after that and the one after that.

If anything, the hanging Saturday at the former military intelligence headquarters in Baghdad's Shia neighborhood of Kazimiyah will propel that killing -- more swiftly and more brutally. It will extend, not shorten, the time it will take before U.S. troops are brought safely home.

And sure enough, within hours, the improvised bombs were going off again.

Thirty people were killed and 50 wounded in a blast at a market in Kula, a Shia town south of Baghdad.

Three car bombs exploded in separate Shia districts of the capital, leaving 45 dead and at least 75 wounded.

No one was seen dancing to any of that.