Saddam Hussein was executed this morning. He was hung until dead, the whole thing was videotaped, and his body has been, reportedly, handed over to a tribe in Iraq for his burial. It's a good thing when a malicious dictator is removed from power and subsequently kept from ever regaining said power, but I'm still not sure that having a foreign influence (which is the United States) do the removal is the best course of action.
Vicious state leaders fill history books. I suppose there have to be bad guys so we can recognize who the good guys are. But with most of those bad guys, it's the people they reign over that usually put the end to them. Czarist governing body, right? Killed in the Russian revolution. Henry and Marie Antoinette killed by their own people in the French Revolution. All these leaders were taken to task by the people they wronged the most: their own countrymen.
A leader, half a world away, who decides that another leader must be removed from power is a risk to every country's sovereignty. How do we, as the United States, respond when there is a threat to our own future, like North Korea or even communism? We're all, "Who are they to tell us what to do?" Who are we to do that to them? Let the people rise up and decide. Hypocrisy is alive and well in U.S. foreign policy.
History and the future have a way of playing with the residents of this planet. Someday, the U.S. will not be the greatest super power on the planet. It's the circle of things that demands that. Here's hoping that the next great government treats us well, doesn't decide that a republic is the wrong kind of government, and is a benevolent ruler.
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