I heard a fly buzz when I died;
The stillness round my form
Was like the stillness in the air
Between the heaves of storm.
The eyes beside had wrung them dry,
And breaths were gathering sure
For that last onset, when the king
Be witnessed in his power.
I willed my keepsakes, signed away
What portion of me I
Could make assignable, and then
There interposed a fly,
With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,
Between the light and me;
And then the windows failed,
and then I could not see to see.
~ Emily Dickinson
It's finally done. The body of Saddam Hussein swung from a rope early this morning. Proud to the last, he refused a hood. He went to the gallows clutching the Koran, and recited a Sunni prayer before his death- an odd end for a man who built one of the most secular nations in the middle east. I have no doubt that the Shia and the Kurds are ecstatic, but the Sunni are restless.
It's going to be a long day.
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Tomorrow will not be great, but hopefully it will be better. Then the day after that, and then the day after that.
ReplyDeleteSorry I missed your call.
It's... It's a weird time right now.
When Mussolini was shot, his body was hung upside down and allowed to be abused until it was decomposing to prove to Italians that he was truly dead and as a warning to his remaining followers. It was good that Saddam was caught alive. By now, there is absolutely no doubt it is Saddam who was executed, and the way this man, who ordered his own followers to fight to the death, was caught and executed puts an exclamation point on his hypocrisy. Hopefully the remaining hardcore Baathist followers don't need Saddam's head displayed to get the point that their cause is dead and so will they if they continue to fight and harbor Al Quaida.
ReplyDeleteHang tough, TD!
ReplyDeleteThe Sunni are restless but the democrats are in a feeding fenzy of stupidity.
ReplyDeleteSorry, no closure. Hussein will be little missed but this does provide Iraqis with a tiny window of opportunity to get their act together (which is very unlikely). If they don't advance soon they will be lost to chaos. A troop surge will not turn it around.
ReplyDeleteYour knowledge of poetry is truly amazing as is your ability to come up with the right poem for the occasion.
ReplyDeleteIt's January 3rd today in Toronto and Maliki is already moaning about not wanting to serve out his full term. I believe a troop surge could work but only if it's political mandate was to hunt down and kill the militias. That's not likely to happen.
It wasn't just the fact that the 172nd Stryker brigade had their tour lengthened that pissed the men off. It's that they weren't used like they were in Mosul to crush the insurgents. The only thing the Iraqi's respect is brute force.
I wish you a safe New Year.