Never have so many congratulations been offered through such painfully gritted teeth. European leaders, Democratic politicians, and media Big Feet all felt compelled to celebrate the capture of Saddam Hussein. After all, as the guardians of the moral conscience of mankind they are supposed to disapprove of dictatorship, torture, and mass murder even more than most people. But welcoming the downfall of Saddam also meant giving aid and comfort to President Bush; that took all the fun out of it.
Listening to European politicians as they followed up their praise for the skill and bravery of the U.S. soldiers who nabbed Saddam with stem demands for the U.S. to share authority in Iraq with the international community or to hand over Saddam to be tried at The Hague, one was reminded of Muslim clerics condemning September 11. Yes, it was shocking and tragic, of course, but so were racist slurs on American Muslims, and “secret evidence” in terrorism trials, and visa rules that discriminated against Middle Eastern countries, and Western colonialism, and the medieval crusades, and the Spanish Reconquista, and … In both sets of instances, the qualifications sounded more important and certainly more heartfelt than the condemnations or congratulations they were qualifying.
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