30 December 2006

War is Not a Word

“War is not a word,” said the political mystic Ramman Kenoun. It is an acronym for “Wasting Others Resources.”

Sometimes it is necessary to follow the acronym's process, as it was in the great struggle with the fascists of the last century. More often it is the highest and most brutal of follies. He dragged his artificial nation into disaster, first against the Persians, and then against the world. The sixty-nine year old former dictator went to the gallows last night, Washington time, just before dawn in his.

I don't know when Saddam saw his last sunrise. He has been in deep custody since he was rooted from his spider hole just over three years ago, December 14th, 2003.

He clutched the Qu'ran, and shouted a few defiant words at the end, so they say. He refused to wear hood that his executioners desired, and the Iraqi authorities demurred to his last request.

He is the first head of state executed in some years. A learned friend reminded me this morning that Hideki Tojo was the Prime Minister of Japan, not the Emperor, and of course Hitler took his own life down in the last bunker. Benito Mussolini might be the last one, sine he styled himself "Il Duce," or The Leader. He was shot by Communist partisans and strung up by his heels at a gas station with his lover Claretta Petacci.

Benito was retired then, forcibly albeit, so that might require an asterisk for the record. Poor Claretta.

There was dancing in the streets when the word spread to Sadr City, the Shia slum in Baghdad.

There was no equivalent dancing here, when the word came on the late news. I might had done a little jig on the way back to my bedroom, but if it was, it was a short one and I do not recall it with any precision. The White House had only a muted comment.

The Kurds are upset that Saddam will not stand trial for the outrages he perpetrated on their people.

The world is black and white, with no shades between. Arab news has already begun to spin the execution as being part of an American-Israeli plot to conduct the hanging on the most holy day of Eid al-Adha or the Feast of Sacrifice. This concludes the Pilgrimage to Mecca, and lasts for three days. It commemorates the willingness of Abraham- Ibraham in the Islamic tradition- to obey God by sacrificing his son.

According to the Qu'ran, Ibrahim was about to sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven stopped him and allowed him to sacrifice a ram instead. The feast re-enacts Ibrahim's obedience by sacrificing a cow or ram. By custom, families eat about a third of the meal and donate the rest to the poor.

I have seen the elegant dome which surmounts the stone that is said to be altar of sacrifice. It has, by turns, been in the holiest inner sanctum of the Temple of the Jews, and covered in rubble by the Legions of Rome. It has been the launching point of Mohammed to Heaven, a Crusader Church, and is a mosque again in the city of the Jews, for now.

Muslims believe the son that Ibrahim was willing to sacrifice to be Ishmael, rather than Isaac as told in the Jewish tradition. Ishmael is the progenitor of the Arabs.

The moisture that had been snow in the West, and Rain in Texas, is here with me this morning as a ground cloud, thick and ghostly.

When I seek answers to hard problems, I always start with the generation who fought the Second War, the one that had no alternative to victory. Everyone went to that fight, home front or combat zone. There was universal agreement among the best, the brightest, and the average Joe and Josephine.

They were given all the tools and power to do what needed to be done.

The most charismatic of the leaders of the Allies was Winston Churchill, who claimed he had not been elected Prime Minister to preside on the dissolution of the British Empire.

Of course he was, since all anyone wanted to do was live through the storm and emerge not under the yoke of defeat. He said: “Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.”

Would that we could remember that. Saddam is dead. Now, on to the next event. There are already new corpses to greet the dawn that was denied him.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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