There I was, a clearing Saturday afternoon, Hillcroft at Westheimer, the heart of what I would call Houston’s strip, literally.  Though it’s of course not the case, it feels as if everyone is either running along the street or ensconced in a 1970’s era Harold Farb apartment complex either doing it or jogging on a treadmill.  In truth, many are taking their clothes off for others in the dark spot lit environs of Baby Dolls, Treasures, Men’s Club, and so forth, while the rest run their cars up the vast 10 lane boulevard, popping into various stores and eateries.
 
I sat at a long red left hand turn light, a pile of cars in front of me.  I don’t know why, but it felt good to be there, a carefree American Saturday afternoon in what felt like a relatively carefree place.  I spotted a CD on the floor that I hadn’t listened to in a long, long time: the Smashing Pumpkins, a 1990’s era band that put together some moving aural assaults before self destructing in personality disputes.  I put it on, and turned it up loud, a 41 year old man reliving some past.  To younger eyes, I must have looked like a funny joke.  But to the newspaper hawker working the intersection, I looked like a customer, and he flashed the day’s headline my way.  I already knew it, but it still had a weird effect on me, seeing it paraded mundanely along the curb.  Big, bold Houston Chronicle Hysteria typeface: SADDAM EXECUTED.
 
I shook my head at him, no paper, and everyone else at the light appeared more interested in getting on with their day too.  Saddam, the bogeyman who invaded the dreams of the entire American political and foreign policy establishment for almost two decades, was dead in a tawdry and violent execution, wherein he was taunted as he may have taunted others who went before him.  Revenge was meted out, justice seems another question entirely.  Regardless, Americans on that sunny Saturday drove around seemingly oblivious to the whole matter.  After years of hearing from their leaders about the catastrophic dangers that Saddam presented to the entire world, it seemed strange to me that the Americans driving Westheimer couldn’t be bothered to glue down with CNN for wall to wall coverage.  Although I can certainly understand if they’re dubious and sick of the whole thing.
 
The most interesting thing I’ve read about Saddam’s execution is a piece from Josh Marshall of the great blog TalkingPointsMemo that came prior to the execution.  Marshall wrote:
 
This whole [Iraq War] endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mâché grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.
 
Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn't come close to cutting it -- the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act… Try pretending it's a war crimes trial but it's just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they're up to now.
 
The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren't grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.
 
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing's a mess and that they're going to be remembered for it -- defined by it -- for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president's issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off -- so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic 'So There!'
 
Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one -- claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.
 
This is what we're reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there's nothing else this president can get right.
 
Josh Marshall, writing a day before the execution, couldn’t have scripted a more tawdry spectacle for the real thing had he tried.  Saddam was executed in front of cameras, cellphones, and Shiite enemies alternately shouting epithets and praises to God.
 
When famous people die, even by execution, the New York Times publishes an obituary.  Neil Macfarquhar’s NYT obituary says that Saddam was beaten mercilessly by his father, until the boy left home for good.
 
Recently my colleagues here at KPFT 90.1 Houston, George Reiter and John McNamara, who host Thresholds, the show right after mine, have been spending a lot of airtime on the subject of the harm one does in disciplining children, including your own, with beatings, spankings, and physical punishment.  I’ve wondered over the past weeks if they’ve spent too much time on it.  But then I thought of Saddam’ dad, beating him merciless until the young man left home, and history that followed.  Suddenly, as I thought about Saddam’s dad and what his own violence has led to, I realized that George and John have been far ahead of the rest of us, trying each week to get us to understand that violent people are started on violence early, most often by being the subject of it as children.  George and John continue to implore us to understand the terrible ongoing lifetime ramifications of hitting your own child.  If you need better proof, look no farther than the terrible and ongoing toll the life of Saddam Hussein has taken.
 
Earlier that morning I had attended my usual Buddhist Saturday morning services.  One of the phrases we chant, one of the vows we make, goes as follows: “Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.”  Sitting at the red light, the hawker’s headlines staring at me, I wondered sadly: does that apply to Saddam?  Would I have vowed to save Saddam?
 
And though few others except the Iraqi Sunni population will say it, I will, addressing particularly the spirit of the young man who had finally had enough and left home to escape his father: Rest in Peace, young Saddam.  The Saddam that came later, including all those tangentially connected to him, including his grotesque executioners and two of our own Presidents both named George Bush, I haven’t decided.  After all, each of us is a work in progress.  Although sometimes you might wonder how some people ever arrived at their notions of progress.
 
I’m Leo Gold.  This is The New Capital Show.