Saddam Hussein's Execution I

Well, we finally got it done. We executed Saddam Hussein. Oh, ok, officially Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity in the "Dujail Trial," which began in the summer of 2005 and concluded in November 2006. His own people tried him, convicted him and executed him. That is the official line. That is the "legal" thing that happened. The purpose of this and the next essay is to probe some factors behind the execution and the prospects for the future. As with many other things in life, the execution of Saddam Hussein tells us more about ourselves, I believe, than about Iraq present or future. Let's begin by talking about American power in the 21st century.

American Power Today

I think I can say without fear of contradiction that the American military is the finest fighting force ever assembled. We can and we have unleashed it around the world. But one of the lessons I have learned about power over the years is that the greater power is, the more it needs to be restrained. The greater one's physical strength, the more it needs limitations, hedges, restraints so that it doesn't end up doing more damage than it should. American military power must be used in conjunction with other aspects of our "genius," such as diplomatic skill or economic power. If the military is used disproportionately, the other "skills" which we bring to the table will be undermined. In short, we can flex our muscles too much for our own good.

This approach to military power is anathema to the guys who like shiny equipment and things blowing up and tyrants brought to their knees. My approach doesn't work for those who feel that as long as you kick butt in life you are a real man. But to use an analogy from the family, if the husband, who probably is physically the strongest, wants to "show his family" who the strongest one is, he might be able to kick his wife's and kids' butts but he will have lost his family. Power is actually only useful to the degree that it is not necessary to use it. Women instinctively know that a person's physical capabilities does not define the scope of his power. It is only one aspect of the person; one feature of a complex melange of things that make up an individual. But men have a harder time learning this lesson. We men often still think, in our animal brains, that mowing down the opposition is all you really need to do. This, and nothing else, defines your manhood.

I think this mood has infected the American psyche in our age. Whether it is reinforced by the nation's almost obsessive focus on competitive male sports in our day is open to question. What doesn't seem questionable to me, however, is that there is a spirit in the air which says that the most convincing sign of American power is our ability to throw our weight around and bomb anyone into submission whenever we want. Like the abusive husband, however, who sometimes gets a "rush" of power when he puts everyone in his family in their place, there is a long period subsequent to the demonstration of this seemingly absolute power where the man, if he has any maturity at all, needs to come to grips with who he is and the limits of his power. In short, he has to realize that the unleashing of his power is sometimes the worst thing he can do to himself, to those he loves, and to the society in which he lives.

Ruminating Further--the Iraq Study Group

The report of the Iraq Study Group ("ISG") takes on a new hue in light of the foregoing. I now see it more and more as a sort of gentle spanking of the President by people who realize that the nature of American power is to be used with restraint rather than ostentation. And, it is a spanking which the President has testily refused to receive because, after all, HE is President and HE can do whatever he damn well pleases. To put it in context, the ISG was comprised mainly of people 10-15 years older than President Bush, whose view of the world was shaped more by Bush I than Bush II, by WWII and its immediate aftermath than by the 1960s. James Baker, Lee Hamilton, Sandra Day O'Connor, Vernon Jordan, William Perry--these are all people who are eloquent defenders of American power but are also people who know something about the limitations of power, too. Their two leading recommendations from the report, that America engage in dialogue with Syria and Iran, and that America gradually withdraw almost all of its troops by early 2008, have both explicitly been attacked by the Bush people. What the current President Bush is so obviously saying, in my judgment, is that "You elders (i.e., my father's friends) can't tell ME what to do. I am the President. I am from Texas. Texans kick butt. I can establish myself independently of my father, even if I have to see the deaths of thousands of more people to show this to be true."

Well, you may argue that the current President Bush is driven by convictions--convictions that a democratic Iraq is best for the Middle East and for our interests there, and that he is going to exorcise the ghosts of Viet Nam by pushing us to "victory" in Iraq. I think on his better days he is driven by those issues. But, on his worse days, and he seems to be having more and more of those as time goes on, he is possessed by other demons, the largest of which seems to be what psychologists call individuation and separation. He is trying to get out of his father's shadow, trying to do more than his dad, trying to show his dad that he is also a man. But he is doing so by publicly rejecting their advice. The younger Bush is saying, "Nah nah nah, you can't MAKE me do it!" And so he gave a photo-op a few days ago with the "big five"--Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gates and Pace (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs). It is saying to everyone who is still listening to him, "WE are in charge, dammit! WE will do what we want to do."

And, in fact, the rest of us will pay for it.

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