Some Reactions to Saddam Hussein's Execution

...more to come, maybe.

Hal
Steve Martin
Dean

Hal, a Jordanian and a Muslim, says "good riddance" but finds the whole thing ghastly.

Steve Martin makes no comments about the execution itself, but satirizes any impulse toward eulogizing the Butcher of Baghdad.

Dean, who blogs at Hugh Hewitt's site, views the execution as an unmitigated triumph of right and says that Iraq and the world should thank the United States for the opportunity US capture of the former dictator gave the Iraqis to hang him.

[UPDATE: Marc Schulman, based on his reading of The New York Times' rundown of all that led to Saddam Hussein's execution, has some questions.]

[ANOTHER UPDATE: The Ambivablogger owns her ambivalent feelings about Saddam Hussein's execution:

I thought my feelings about this were simple -- he's an evil man, his continued presence is a provocation, good riddance -- but the more I read about it, the more complicated and strongly ambivalent...my feelings become.

Reading about European scruples and vapors about the death penalty, my gut instinct is that there is something barbaric and bloodthirsty about our majority American attitude toward it that is young and healthy, while there is something etiolated and vitiated about the sophisticated shrinking from wanting to see someone like Saddam pay the ultimate price. If anything, his death by hanging was too quick and merciful. A tyrant can take hundreds of thousands of lives, and ruin millions more, yet has only one of his own to pay.

...reading about the execution itself, how rushed and politicized it was, I see that it was not an act of justice in any sober sense but an act of sectarian revenge and triumphalism by the Shi'ites. Many in the execution chamber acted like vigilantes at a lynching...

Also make note of the varied reactions to Amba's post in the comments section.

Many different reactions continue to swirl around the execution of Saddam Hussein.]