Saddam Executed

At 6:10am today, Iraqi time, Saddam Hussein has been executed. The front page of the NYTimes.com flashes the headline "HUSSEIN IS EXECUTED" more like a lament than a triumph. With the neverending coverage of the war on NPR and so many Iraqis telling the radio station that their lives were safer and more stable under Hussein, it sometimes seems true that the country would have been better off under a dictator instead of US militant forces.

This execution seems immensely surreal to me. I still remember sitting riveted to the tv as an elementary school student watching the first bombs drop on Iraq during Dessert Storm. Then, as a recently graduated college student working for the political consulting firm Greenberg, Quinlan Rosner in DC, I recall how my entire office jammed into the conference room to watch the US do it all over again under another Bush. Most of my colleagues went back to their desks in despair while our vice president celebrated. Secretly, I agreed with him. If you are in the position to dispose a great evil and in turn help millions struggling under a terrible dictator, then I believe you are under the moral obligation to do so. This has nothing to do with religion or creed but simply a duty that you have to aid your fellow man. It is unfortunate that something that could have been a great deed has been turned evil and I suppose that the disposition of an immoral power can now be applied to the US.

Well Saddam is now dead, hundred of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis continue to die and still each week the President twiddles his thumbs, telling us he'll come up with a plan soon. Even with a slightly leaning Democratic Congress, I don't think we will see the end until another president takes office. John Edwards has officially announced his candidacy, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama soon to follow no doubt. Edwards doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell, though I do like him immensely. My vote would be for Clinton/Obama. I did hear a statistic on NPR the other day saying that countries with women chiefs are always the second woman to have run for the office meaning that Clinton could potentially be setting herself up as the sacrificial lamb.