There are several reasons why Bush should free Saddam Hussain. . .or at least exert whatever political strength he has left to block Saddam's death sentence.
- Saddam may be one of Bush's only lifelines out of the Iraq mess. As dictator, he knew how to keep the various factions quiet. Bush obviously doesn't have that trick down just yet. If given his freedom, Saddam might help pull Bush's fat out of the fire. . .or not. But it's worth a try.
- Executing Saddam would put the entire enterprise into perspective as an aggressive attack contravening the Geneva Convention. Generally, one refrains from killing defeated heads of state; rather they are used to settle the population and restore order. Executing Saddam would force the world to view the Iraq aggression as an enterprise steeped not in modern but in medieval rules of warfare: kill the king, take the land. There are still many people who consider Saddam Hussain the soul of Iraq. By killing Saddam, the U.S. turns these people into potential terrorists willing to retaliate against our own elected officials.
- Executing Saddam closes the door on all those who considered pre-war Baghdad MORE peaceful than it is today. That, as it turns out, consists of most people with access to news coverage.
- Executing Saddam tells the world that the United States president is perfectly willing to overthrow a sovereign nation and kill it's leaders. This history lesson to the rest of the world will make diplomacy very difficult or impossible.
- Executing Saddam, to many, is the same thing as executing the governance of Iraq. These people will likely seek retaliation using the same means as was used against their country. This will result in an exponential increase in terrorism against United States officials as well as U.S. citizens.
- Once an execution takes place, it cannot be undone. Only the dumbest of politicians limits his own opportunities, yet that is exactly what George Bush would be doing by allowing the Saddam execution to take place.
- The American public will likely examine Bush's historical embrace of the death sentence as governor of Texas. In doing so, it will likely place this man in an entirely new and very unpleasant light, and may eventually result in the difference between mere impeachment and war criminal status.
- While the Old Testament Fire&Brimstone shouters may love it, the New Testament evangelicals may have problems with the ethics: Bush attacked a sovereign nation and put it's chief executive to death. Simple, very Old Testament kind of stuff, but not the kind of thing Jesus would endorse. Nor would the United States really want something like this on its resume.
- It will give some Dems a great question to ask of the GOPers (or a select number of their own:) "Do you endorse the execution of Saddam?" Their answer will speak volumes about them, us and what our nation currently is all about. . .and what it's not.
10.Over time, Americans will reject Bush as quintessentially UN-American, an anomaly, something that momentarily corrupted the body politic of a Great Nation and had to be removed, not only from power, but from History itself. This may take a variety of forms, but the result will be a purge of George W. Bush from the Official Self-Congratulatory Record of the United States of America. While Bush may be a hero to some isolated die-hard talk radio hosts, the academic view will likely be that this president was a near-lethal virus on the body politic of America, stripping it of it's ability to be trusted by any nation, and thus damaging its ability to do business in the world.