Saddam's Second Life

And yet prior to his hanging, Saddam had become something of an afterthought. The nightmare of his tyranny has been replaced by the new plagues of terrorism and sectarian carnage. Many Iraqis--not all of them Sunni--hark nostalgically back to the dictatorship, pointing out that for all the terrors Saddam visited upon his people, at least there were no suicide bombers and death squads roaming the streets. But once his trial began, even his most ardent followers conceded he would never return to power. The Sunni Baathist insurgents have long since stopped fighting for him. Many have recast themselves as the "nationalist resistance," or worse, mujahedin. Many others have abandoned Baathism for the more poisonous jihadist ideology of al-Qaeda.

The question is whether the sectarian tumult surrounding his execution will lend Saddam a new stature, allowing his loyalists to portray him not as a convicted killer but as a victim, mercilessly lynched by a vengeful, U.S.-backed Shi'ite government. Indeed, some have been planning to do so all along. One afternoon last October, I watched the televised Saddam trial in the company of Abu Hamza, a former senior officer in the Republican Guard. Watching his former boss sitting sullenly in the dock, Abu Hamza shook his head. Even a loyal follower could see no dignity there. Then, in a cool, matter-of-fact tone, he began to talk of Saddam's death. "They will just hang him one night and announce it the next day," he said. "They will bury him quietly and forbid his family from building a mausoleum. After that, they will try to make Iraqis believe Saddam never existed." Abu Hamza, however, believed that in death Saddam would become an immortal martyr in the eyes of Sunnis. "When they hang Saddam, they will make him once again powerful," he said. It bodes ill for Iraq's future that he may well be proved right.