Well Saddam is dead after experiencing the indignity of a kangaroo court. (The Green Man was intrigued to discover that this term was not limited to the Australian idiom.) Of course the injustice of his trial and the nature of his presumed torture and actual execution were so much less than that he inflicted on others that the general opinion seems to be that we should overlook it in the name of the greater good of humanity, which is, of course, what most people will do.

The outrage it seems is not that he failed to receive a fair trial or that he was killed by the state but that we were forced to confront the reality of what was going on via illicit videoing of his execution by some of the attending officials.

Michael Leunig has written and insightful piece in the Age on this very issue.

I believe we now have the unique modern cruelty of the refined and educated Western man; the respected gentleman in the fine suit who has never much dirtied his hands or killed a living creature, never meditated upon a rotting corpse and never had his consciousness infected with the messy organic substances of violent death - yet who can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.

We have the situation where the general consensus was that Saddam should die but that we should be shielded from the sordid reality of the actual event. We choose not to confront the reality of the death of the cow when we pick up the packets of meat in the supermarket and we are outraged when we are confronted with the consequence of our collective belief that this man should die.

I speak from the Australian perspective of course. In America there appears to be much more censorship of what goes to air on television. Perhaps if you are in America you can continue to focus on the greater good and remain blissfully unaware of the fact that we lowered ourselves to his level with the sordidness and cruelty that we sanctioned against this man.

Read the full article here.