On my sister’s birthday, December 13th, she got an extra kick to celebration by the capture of Saddam Hussein. It was particularly joyous to her because her granddaughter had served in Iraq. Seeing this once feared tyrant so disheveled and disoriented was a moment devoutly wished. Here was a man who sent his sons to go out in “glory” while he cowered in a living tomb. 

Over the months, in hearing the Democratic candidates criticizing Bush for his failure to find bin Laden and Saddam, I felt it would definitely come back to haunt them. Pointing out rising casualties by self-serving politics bothered me also. Kucinich, on the other hand, is genuinely concerned for the troops’ welfare and in no uncertain terms want them out of harm’s way and to put an end to the precedence of the defense department over the state department. Except for the boost of morale — in no way do I minimize this, especially among the fear-ridden Iraqis — capture or not has little to do with the current state of war. Saddam’s pathetic portrayal is evidence of his being incompetent to mastermind insurgency — and how could there have been inspirational value from a mud hut?
Moreover, it seems improbable to me that bin Laden has access to health care for his frail kidney condition and is probably dead [granted I thought the same thing about Saddam] but even alive how effective could he be isolated in a cave? The continuing resistance in Afghanistan stems from new leadership in Pakistan, the Taliban, and the warlords. Saddam and bin Laden have been stripped of leadership, and should not be equated with a courageous leader who made the ultimate sacrifice at the head of a military charge.  This said, I have been against the war from the beginning. Its pretended aim was to free the world of WMD, not rid the world of but another tyrant who had been a terrorist to his own people — as sickening as that was — but totally contained for twelve years. Nor can it be heralded as humanitarian intervention as was Kosovo, which officially was an autonomous republic, plagued by an incursion of ethnic cleansing. Nevertheless, we are nine months into this fracas, and there is no point in dwelling on the flaws of the past. What is important is to muster a preemptive, political war against such a fiasco from ever happening again. We were supposed to have learned this lesson from the bloody Vietnam days.