My Errant Mind

The former Iraqi dictator has been hanged. It’s coming in over the wires and websites are posting the news. Saddam Hussein, Barzan Hassan, and Awad Bandar have all met justice in an Iraq they terrorized before that brutal regime was overthrown. Perhaps now, this is some small measure of justice and comfort to those many Iraqis who lost family members under Saddam’s brutal rule.

This is the second birthday memory I have now to associate with Iraq. The first was turning 21 while deployed overseas during Operation Desert Shield back in 1990. Now, 16 years later, the dictator that we sought to expel for his brutal invasion of Kuwait is adding himself to my memories once again on my birthday. This time with his death.

The strange thing will be not hearing about him any longer. I enlisted in the military at the age of 17, and ever since, I’ve heard his name in the news. In a way, there’s this feeling of a breath you’ve been holding being let out, a feeling of relief. On the other hand, there’s some odd feeling I can’t quite put my finger on. Perhaps anxiety that his execution won’t change anything in the region. Perhaps when you’ve spent a major portion of your life as a warrior—or simply standing against someone and what they represented for so long—you find an odd emptiness coexisting alongside with the jubilant feeling of victory when the enemy is gone?

On the definitely positive side, there’s one less brutal dictator and terrorist supporting regime in the world. The sad thing is that he’s the one we knew we could take down, and we’re balking at confronting the tougher nuts to crack. Assad in Syria, Ahmadinejad in Iran, Kim Jong-Il in North Korea, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela are still potent threats to world peace and stability that need to be addressed.

The Taliban still isn’t completely vanquished, and Iraq is in the midst of bloody civil war; our fight in the War on Terror is just getting underway, and it looks indeed to be a long, drawn out war. I’m not sure enough Americans truly understand the scope of what lies ahead and what the cost of freedom will be.

In any case, I’m glad it’s over. Maybe his death will somehow make Iraqis on all sides of the sectarian strife stop and think…and reconcile. We can only hope. The bogeyman is dead and gone. Now, the responsibility for peace lies on the shoulders and heads of the Iraqis that lived so long in fear of him.