h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Today was Sunday 5 November. It grew windy after noon, and was dark by 5.00pm. From afternoon onwards the sky increasingly filled with the bangs of fireworks. The moon was full, and cast an orangey-autumnal glow on the clouds smeared thinly across its disc. The wind hurried them rapidly across the sky. All around the horizon, sparkling columns climbed above the buffeted trees and dark rooftops, before violently bursting into clouds of coloured stars. Green, purple, gold, red, blue. The delay between the glittering trails and the accompanying bang - always a second or two later - seemed slightly disconcerting, almost like a concussion.

Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging today.

It seemed a very humanly banal moment. After a moment's pause, he gathered himself and began shouting defiantly, decrying the court as collaborators, identifying himself with the people. Gesturing with a finger, and praising god.

John Simpson said, as Saddam was led out of the court, there was a faint smile of satisfaction on the ex-dictator's face. Shia areas rejoiced; Sunni areas protested and carried banners of Saddam's face.

In the moment of delay between the sentence and the reaction (a delay which may have resulted from the way the footage was edited, I am aware), I imagined how it would feel to know that the rest of your life had been determined in that way. He didn't look like a dictator who had killed or been responsible for the deaths of 100,000s at that moment; just like an oldish man in a suit, shirt, no tie. His hair was very neatly combed.

I don't pity him at all, though I do not support the death penalty. (It seems likely, even from a purely practical point of view, that executing him might have worse results than locking him away for the rest of his life). That is why it is strange to suddenly feel some degree of human empathy - at the realisation of one's own impending death, imposed following proceedings and rules written in simple words and printed on a page, followed as part of men's jobs - with someone who has done the things Saddam has.

One news programme showed old, poor quality video of another ordinary-looking man in a suit being removed from a lecture theatre, I think in the 1980s, to be executed. Saddam, at a lecturn on stage, summarily gave an order, and two security men near the victim removed him through a nearby door. Presumably his life ended within minutes or hours.

It's too late to think about this. I might come back to it later.

I don't have a television, so I only heard this on the radio. Your description is interesting. I might point some people who are discussing this in someone else's journal this way, if that's alright?

"It seems likely, even from a purely practical point of view, that executing him might have worse results than locking him away for the rest of his life." -- That sentance in particular.

See you around! Your posts in the Veil and the Cross conversation have been interesting.

TRiG.

Hi TRiG

Yes, that's fine with me. (Wish I could edit out the bit about fireworks first though).

(And thanks re: the Veil and the Cross - sounds like a pub . It's sometimes interesting, sometimes irritating, and at the moment feels like no one is really getting anywhere).

http://www.slate.com/id/2152999/nav/tap1/

Christopher Hitchens's article:

'Almost every preceding change of regime in [Iraq] was marked by the execution of at least some of the previous leadership. Perhaps it might be desirable to break with this depressing tradition.'

And various other interesting points after.