Bush shows no sign of comprehending the catastrophe he has created, writes Lara Marlowe.
What do you do when death squads roam the streets of Baghdad, when the security forces you've armed and trained systematically torture and murder detainees, when you've squandered 3,000 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in an ill-conceived military venture that sparked a civil war? Kill the dictator.
The execution of Saddam Hussein on December 30th betrayed the impotence that underlies US power. It took George Bush nearly four years to overthrow, apprehend and execute the "butcher of Baghdad".
But what an empty victory; nearly a month after the Hamilton-Baker report provided a rational basis for making the best of a bad job, Bush shows no sign of comprehending the catastrophe he has created. His comment on the execution of Saddam was a partial admission of the futility of the act which Bush admitted, "will not end the violence in Iraq", and an exercise in the same empty rhetoric that has characterised his conduct of the war.
Saddam's death was "an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain and defend itself and be an ally in the war on terror," Bush said. Really? How? Why does the US president get away with such meaningless palaver? Yet again, the US has blithely committed an act of unforeseeable, far-reaching consequences. When I called friends in California to wish them a happy new year, they told me Americans were far more interested in the death of 93-year-old former president Gerald Ford than Saddam's execution. US media took the line that by pardoning the felonious Richard Nixon, the dim-witted Ford "healed the nation".
Saddam was executed at the beginning of the Muslim Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice, a time of forgiveness, when even the tyrant Saddam used to free prisoners. For the Shia, who were Saddam's main victims, and whom the US has now brought to power, the execution was a cause for celebration.
But for the Sunnis, who comprise the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, the choice of day was yet another provocation. In the West, the coincidence with New Year's Eve added a grotesque, Roman circus feel to an already barbaric act. One couldn't help wondering whether the execution was meant to distract attention from the real milestone of the weekend - the 3,000th US soldier to die in Iraq.
Saddam's last words, as recounted by judge Munir Haddad, one of the official witnesses, were: "I hope that you will remain united and I warn you: do not trust the Iranian coalition; these people are dangerous." The former dictator's words sounded like a harbinger of the break-up of Iraq, the "solution" which some US commentators have long advocated. Iraqi Sunnis, with some reason, consider the Sciri and Dawa parties now nominally in power to be tools of Iran. Saddam's words point towards the danger of a region-wide Sunni-Shia conflagration.
Last month an adviser to the Saudi ambassador in Washington caused alarm by saying that Riyadh could not stand idly by while Iran extends its influence.
Until his hands were bound behind his back, Saddam held a Koran, which according to the Agence France Presse "he wanted sent to a person".
To whom? To his widow, Sajida, or his daughters, Raghad and Rana? To a Sunni cleric for safe-keeping? Such is the stuff of holy relics; my neighbour in Ireland, who attended the Jesuit school at Stonyhurst, told me how 400 years after the execution of Mary Stuart, the school treasures the prayer book she held through the night preceding her decapitation.
I've often thought of the US magazine editor who told me how impressed he'd been by Saddam's Iraq. Compared to other Arab countries, it was modern, secular and progressive, especially in its treatment of women, he said.
Millions of Arabs now feel that "the US has done one of ours". Resentment of the US is strengthened, and I suspect that when Arab history books come to be written, Saddam's torture chambers and crimes against humanity will be forgotten; the memory of an enlightened leader who dared to stand up to the US will prevail.
Did Saddam's erstwhile friends in Europe and America, the Jacques Chiracs and Donald Rumsfelds of this world, feel a tinge of remorse, or relief, to learn he was dead? It is scandalous that the US boasted of organising a "public" trial for Saddam, when the procedure was carefully devised to prevent the former dictator from dragging down his former allies with him.
Judges in the US-built courtroom disposed of two buttons, one to cut the sound when Saddam spoke, and another to draw a curtain across the dock when he misbehaved. Journalists and observers in the glassed-in gallery heard and saw only what they were permitted to.
Excerpts were released for broadcast with a 20- to 30-minute delay, ensuring that any revelations by Saddam could be censored.
The Islamic Republic of Iran praised the execution. One might have expected Iran to demand a full account by Saddam of the weapons and intelligence that the US and European powers provided for his illegal invasion of Iran in 1980. When Saddam used chemical weapons - again, provided by the West - to massacre thousands of Kurds at Halabja, the US State Department instructed diplomats to blame the atrocity on Tehran.
The statement by the British foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, to which prime minister Tony Blair subscribed, at the same time welcomed Saddam's execution and condemned the death penalty. Could anything be more absurd? If capital punishment is immoral, it is in all cases, "even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes", the Vatican noted.
It was chilling to see Saddam's executioners in their medieval black hoods.
But television networks stopped short of showing us the snapped neck and twisting corpse. Time and again, we are spared the worst images of war in Iraq, Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied territories on the grounds of "taste". If we had to watch it all - dead children, mangled bodies, and yes, Saddam's execution - perhaps the citizens of western democracies might hold their own leaders to account.