A Hung Country

“This dark page has been turned over,” Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, told Iraqi television immediately after the execution of Saddam Hussein. “Saddam is gone. Today Iraq is an Iraq for all the Iraqis, and all...Iraqis are looking forward.”

Unfortunately, 10 days after Saddam’s plunge through the trapdoor of the gallows, al-Rubaie’s prediction that Saddam’s death would be a unifying event for Iraq—as it should have been—rings hollow. Saddam’s status as one of this and last century’s most ruthless tyrants has not been brought into question, nor should it ever. Instead, al-Rubaie’s prediction seems laughable because Saddam’s execution was overrun by the endless sectarian violence that has come to dominate this new page in Iraqi history, which may be just as dark as Saddam’s.

Hussein’s trial and execution were supposed to provide a historical reckoning, a sense of closure, and an opportunity for the Iraqis to establish an autonomous system of justice. Given Iraqi standards of justice, that end would have best been served by a professional and staid hanging. Instead, the execution devolved into a Shiite lynching that was calculated to inflame sectarian tensions.

The cell phone video of Saddam’s hanging is as shocking for the taunting and chaos of the gallows as it is for the gruesome climax. As the noose was tied around Saddam’s neck, the Iraqi judge and prosecutor, present to ensure order, lost control. The guards began chanting “Moktada,” referring to Moktada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric responsible for inciting much of Iraq’s sectarian violence. The guards then proceeded to dance around Saddam’s dead body and gleefully yell “to hell,” dispelling any notion of an “Iraq for all Iraqis” grounded in justice and equality. Even the timing of the execution appeared to be a deliberate affront to Iraqi Sunnis, as Saddam was hung minutes before the start of the Sunni holy festival of Eid.

The result of the fiasco at the gallows is that across the Sunni world, Saddam, once anathema even to most Sunnis, is rapidly being transformed into a martyr who courageously stood up to a vengeful Shiite majority. Iraq’s Shiite-dominated government, and particularly Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who fast-tracked and oversaw Saddam’s execution, is squarely to blame.

Instead of unity, Saddam’s execution has come to symbolize a deep fragmentation. It is becoming increasingly clear that Iraq’s internecine violence runs so deep in the cultural and ethnic fabric of the country that it is naïve to think that the United States will be able to prevail by military force alone. The sad truth is that there is no such thing as a united Iraqi people, nor does it appear that there can be a truly representative Iraqi unity government in the near future.

If large portions of the Iraqi people cannot even hold back sectarian angst to carry out a proper execution, we fail to see how the Bush administration’s solution of more bullets, more armor, and a “surge” of 20,000 to 40,000 troops will facilitate democracy, stability, or functional institutions. It’s not time to leave Iraq yet, but the fallout from Saddam’s execution is one more indication that the American presence there has a severely limited utility.