Sic Semper Tyrranus

About 24 hours now since I learned Saddam was dead. Time for a retrospective.

Earlier today, after several hours of an unexpected and unpleasant "personal life experience"; feeling very tired, I took a break and took a nap. As I was calming myself, as I started to get dozy, I happened to think of that photograph of Saddam laying on his back, his cheek gently pressed to the cloth but his neck snapped, and I started to feel a fuzzy sense of wonderment, a pleasure, and a conviction that, after all, all was right with the world... and I pleasantly fell asleep.

Now, I don't care if Saddam is in hell or not. As a Christian I accept that if he at the very end recognized his sins, truly and remorsefully confessed those sins, and called upon God to save his soul, then right at this moment he is happily in God's arms, and I am happy for him too. This is the way it is if you're a Christian. God loves all His children, even Saddam, and desires not the condemnation any; those who come to him, however late they might come, are blessed... It could have happened. But I don't much care one way or the other. It's not that the disposition of Saddam's soul is unimportant, it's that I utterly don't care about Saddam the man. I care about Saddam only as the tyrant. And the tyrant is dead.

And this is my immense pleasure, that a society --not a mob, a society-- tried him, condemned him, executed him. Sic Semper Tyrannus --so may it always be with tyrants. I don't believe that a society that has once rid itself of a tyrant in this way will ever again long suffer another. Iraq the Model states the same sentiment:

Executing Saddam is an execution to a dark era in Iraq's history and it's a message to all those who followed his ways that there is no turning back; yes, the people will never kneel to a tyrant again and will never give up.

A regicide through an individual simply brings another king, but a regicide through a social movement calling on freedom brings a different government. I just don't believe that a people that has once tasted this power, as a free people, will ever forget. Tyranny in Iraq is gone forever, --at least in the classic Arab style. Oh, there may be harsh powers established, once, twice; but each time it will be an uneasy power, and will not last. The people will no longer have that habit of obedience, they will no longer see such shame as a natural order; they will chafe, they will rebel. Without that habit of quaking subservience, and with the counter example of free and prosperous peoples present to every modem and every phone, a tyranny can not succeed. You need only break the mold once, and tyranny is done. This is a transformation.

It is true that they succeeded only with American help, and it is true that their freedoms so far are short lived and difficult, but they've got the taste. I don't think they'll forget. And they've expressed the power. This is the huge thing. It's not that they simply "gave freedom a try to see what it was like"; they made it happen, and that they made it happen is established by the judicial achievement of Saddam's death.

Possibly I presume too much. Those seeking to establish tyranny are always present, and they do have the longer habit, but the free Iraqi people did execute a tyrant, and if you can do it once, you can do it twice. Some things you just never forget.