The fate of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein first came into world limelight when he invaded Kuwait. In my high school then, I remember doing the countdown for the deadline given by the opposition to begin a war. It was much later, at the war museum in London, that I saw a video of Saddam Hussein taken during the gulf war of 1991 in which he was patting the back of a white boy captured, on television. It was clear that this man was clearly an enemy of the west, or even worse, for even enemies won't do that unless they were really sure of what they were doing.

A documentary on television described the rule of terror one of his sons was, especially on the sportsmen. The sons reportedly feared assassination by the west, and, in a macabre way, their fears came true one day.

If one goes through his biography, he was a typical power-hungry man trying to reach the top of the pyramid through all means. A dictator. He seemed to admire Hitler, and wished he could get all the jews from Palestine to Babylon with their hands tied, so says an obituary on him.

He was above all laws, and was finally brought down before the law. If justice means revenge with rules and procedures thrown in, than he got justice. If he had been killed in the war, that would have been a fair fate for him, and might have gone down well with him in the last few minutes.

He did not look or appear to be a psychopath as The Times obituary refers to him, unless we call all tyrants as such. If he ordered killing of innocent civilians, than he went against humanity. Did he deserve this fate? It seems like a tit-for-tat justice. In hindsight, it may look cruel to the soft-hearted, and he did cut a sorry figure in captivity. He appeared to lack a sense of justice, and this sentence was his first and last, and a just, lesson.