Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Saddam is gone forever!

My cell phone rang off the hook today as people everywhere continued to rejoice over the capturing of Saddam Hussein, what a catch. Friends and families were calling all day to express their appreciation for what we, the USA, had done for them. This is a day that most thought would never come in their life time, hopelessly in bondage to a supposedly unbeatable foe.

Most of them could not believe the photos they saw in the morning paper. Saddam Hussein, their one time self proclaimed King, Ruler, dictator, almost deified leader, considered to be super-human, magical and mystical, once thought to be able to call upon the evil spirits from the other side, master of the red genie tribe, and seen as the leader of his own Saddam cult, there he was with matted down hair, dirty, unshaven, like just any other normal human being.

How could it be? They would ask out loud, in amazement and disbelief. How could it be like this? Saddam, their strong and brave leader surrendering without a shot being fired, not even a shot to end his own pathetic life? Where is the courageous murderer of countless thousands perhaps even millions? Where is the ruthless torturer of millions more, with an iron hand that ruled them for so long?

There he was crawling out of a snake's hole in the ground, like some coward as if to beg for his life. He was just like them, a common man with no special powers to whisk him away on a cloud of thunder, to bring down lightning bolts of fire upon his assailants. He was nothing but a worm to crawl from his earthen home, hoping to negotiate for his life, as if he had some last chip to leverage.

They were appalled at what he had become, the man who once had everything at his fingertips, the wealth of this nation, the will of its people, and the power to take whatever he wanted. In the end he had nothing to show for his thirty years of effort to build an empire. They saw his human frailties and his lack of courage to go down in a blaze of shots.

The people of Iraq are rid of him forever. I felt their pain to the extent that I could and I knew their joy to some degree, for I too felt like weeping as the people, as if by proxy, cried for their dead and lost loved ones. The people were finally able to release the sorrow of the past enslavement through their cries and screams, as if to say Saddam you did not win, you did not beat us, we outlasted you and we will have our day. It is over.