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Hussein Is Gone, But War Isn't


Revenge, at first though sweet,

Bitter ere long back on itself recoils.


—John Milton (1608–1674)

Paradise Lost, book ix, line 171


 

Are we supposed to feel better now that Saddam Hussein is dead? Does the act of hanging the former dictator of Iraq give the United States or the Iraqi Shiites or Kurds some measure of victory that was absent before? The outcome of the trial of Saddam Hussein and his cohorts appeared to be a foregone conclusion from the start. Once he was captured, there seemed no other path that Iraqi or U.S. justice would take but to culminate in a guilty verdict that would demand death.

But wasn’t Saddam as good as dead already? Driven from power, imprisoned, diminished, his sons dead: Would he ever have had the opportunity to return to any kind of power? It seems impossible. Yet revenge was exacted.

This revenge will not better the lives of Iraqis now, and will not make the jobs of American servicemen and women any easier. Attacks continue at the same pace on the streets of Baghdad, with sectarian violence raging, just as before the execution. The timing of the hanging, on the eve of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, has only added to the polarizing effect of the death sentence of the fallen tyrant.

Before the mid-term elections, Republicans and Democrats alike were using the release of the findings of the Iraq Study Group as the next step in the process of war planning. Now, the Bush administration is refusing to act on the recommendations of that group, and is instead discussing an increase in troops in Iraq and continues to refuse to speak with other countries not seen as allies in the region, including Iran and Syria.

The grim count of American service members killed in the Iraq war has reached 3,000. It is time for the Bush administration to admit that it has entangled this country in a quagmire and to begin to take steps to extricate our military from its impossible task of mediating a civil war.

Read Tom Shachtman’s Long View column on the Viewpoint page this week for insight into the comparisons between the Iraq war and the Vietnam War. Our country should not have to answer to its citizens and to history for another protracted, poorly executed denouement of a misguided war.

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