Random Variable

In the early hours of this morning, former president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was hanged in Baghdad. Little needs to be said about his life, as has been documented everywhere else on the net.

The timing of his death seems a bit odd however. Is it meant as an Eid present to Shi’ite, or an Eid humiliation of the global Sunni population? I wonder under whose orders this day was chosen.

Was it the Iraqi government attempting to please the “Big Other” – the United States – or perhaps offer an Eid present to the Shi’ite. If so, then the government appears to be rather thuggish in the way it meets out justice. United States planning seems more likely, only because only they would be tactless enough to think that executing him on this day would be a good thing. Of course, maybe it is supposed to be an act of humiliation towards the global Muslim population, the West’s new objet petit a. “Don’t fuck with us; otherwise this’ll be what you get.” If this is actually the case, as Josh Marshall, Kieran Healy, and I suspect, then isn’t this the perfect example of an entity which has already lost its power – a display of the emperor’s new clothes in a time when no one believes the emperor is wearing any. But do we, as Žižek claims, all agree to the deception? Few in the Islamic world seem to, and despite all the pictures of Shi’ite towns celebrating, the Iraqi blogosphere is showing mixed reactions.

In any case, Derek Wall, Male Principle Speaker of the Green Party has condemned the execution, saying it “continues the brutality rather than ending it”. It’s an important point, but not one I’m sure I agree with and will revisit in due course.