[Peace-discuss] Would Bush do as well?

[C. G. Estabrook]

["...nothing in his life/Became him like the leaving it..." --CGE]


NY Times 6 January 2007:

     In the week since Saddam Hussein was hanged in an execution steeped 
in sectarian overtones, his public image in the Arab world, formerly 
that of a convicted dictator, has undergone a resurgence of admiration 
and awe.

     On the streets, in newspapers and over the Internet, Mr. Hussein 
has emerged as a Sunni Arab hero who stood calm and composed as his 
Shiite executioners tormented and abused him.

     “No one will ever forget the way in which Saddam was executed,” 
President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt remarked in an interview with the 
Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot published Friday and distributed by 
the official Egyptian news agency. “They turned him into a martyr.”

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A comment from a reader of the website Talking Points Memo:

     I would like to refer to the note about Saddam’s changing image in 
the Arab world. I have lived in the United Arab Emirates for 8 years. 
The other night I was taking a little run into Dubai for a bad burrito 
(for some strange reason the cooks in Dubai do appalling things to 
Mexican food) and a beer. My taxi driver, Amjed, a Pakistani who has 
been driving taxi in Sharjah and Dubai for 25 years, was unusually quiet 
on this trip. Finally, after we got going on the freeway, he asked me,

     “So, Saddam gone, eh?”

     “Yes,” I answered. “He is dead. He was a bad man. But it won’t 
change the troubles in Iraq.”

     “He was bad man,” Amjed agreed. “You see?”

     “No. I didn’t see it.”

     “I see on television. He was brave.”

     “I heard that.”

     “He was bad man. In end, he was brave. He was not afraid. In end he 
was brave man. Was good.”

     I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. We drove on in 
silence. When we got to the bar, I thanked him, tipped him, walked in, 
and ordered a cold pint of Stella.

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