The end

Life has become increasingly hectic as this year has gone on, for reasons including a bigger workload at my day job, the odd bit of freelancing, some light playwriting, and the unexpected urge to move in with my girlfriend.

The upshot of this is, as any regular readers will have noticed, my blogging has slowed to a standstill. Whether this will change in the New Year, I can't say; but I wouldn't put money on it, unless you want to a) lose it, and b) get a really weird look from a rather bemused bookie.

However, I thought I should at least make one last post before 2006 winds down. And with his speech on how the execution of Saddam Hussein marks the end of 'a dark chapter in Iraq's history', Iraqi prime minister Nouri Maliki made the choice of subject rather obvious.

I was on the fence about the invasion of Iraq. On the one hand: wicked tyrant created by Britain and America, a threat to regional stability, and those terrifying weapons of mass destruction. On the other, pre-emptive war is a bloody scary precedent, Iraq had bugger all to do with 9-11, and we were all told lies by our governments to persuade us it was a good idea.

As it has turned out, the case against was the stronger. This is partly because it's clearly made us less safe (remember July 7th?). But perhaps more worryingly, it turned out that the detailed battle plan put together by the finest military minds the US had to offer consisted entirely of the words, "Invade Baghdad! Freedom is on the march!", followed by 400 blank pages where a plan for reconstruction was supposed to be.

Through all this mess, though, the one thing that everyone seemed to agree on was the Saddam Was Bad. He killed hundreds of thousands; he created an apartheid in which a Sunni minority ruled over the Shiites and the Kurds; he invaded neighbouring states; and, in one bizarre televised incident, he felt up a ten year old boy. Let's face it, this guy was nuts.

And now he's dead. That should be a good thing, right? So why was it that reading the headlines this morning, I felt my skin crawling?

Partly I suspect it's because Saddam is the first 'celebrity' to be executed in my lifetime. (Well, there was Ceausescu, but I was nine at the time and more interested in what Father Christmas had brought me.)

But partly also it's because of the horribly excited way in which the incident has been greeted by parts of the media. The Star, the British tabloid for those who find the Sun too intellectually taxing, ran the headline "Happy Noose Year" over a mocked up picture of... well, you can guess the rest. As I write, the frontpage over at Fox News is offering us video footage of Saddam actually having the noose tied around him.

...does this strike anyone else as just a little barbaric? A man had been executed as a direct result of Anglosphere foreign policy - and people are cheering. Aren't the values that we're supposed to be trying to export to the Middle East precisely the ones which would tell us to rise above this kind of thing?

And isn't 'an eye for an eye' such a monumentally fucking stupid ethical code, that Aeschylus was writing plays about how it screws people up twenty five fucking centuries ago?

One suspects there are going to be a lot of angry Sunnis out there right now - and they weren't exactly feeling serene to start with. And then there are Saddam's mates over in Palestine's Hamas-led government, who now have yet another excuse for refusing to sit down and talk peace with the Israelis.

Still, as Bush and Blair will keep reminding us, Saddam was evil. That of course makes everything that flows from his death entirely justified, doesn't it.

Anyway. Happy new year to one and all. In Lovell-related news, check this out.