...a cellphone video of his hasty execution made it to the internets, as you know, and I remember thinking that it was a helluva thing that the only individual in the room displaying any dignity during that sorry spectacle was Saddam-fucking-Hussein. The guy was a dimestore Stalin, of course, but he imagined himself, as despots will, as the embodiment of his people's greatness, a patriot and protector obliged at times to take stern and even harsh measures to secure the nation's greatness and advance its destiny. No doubt he had an enlarged perception of his personal majesty extending to the sense that the lavish comfort of his several palaces were no more than his due for the heavy historical duties he bore uncomplainingly for Iraq.

Your garden-variety tyrant, in other words, and if he hadn't got himself crosswise with a slightly sclerotic hegemony by presuming to lay his finger on the imperial carotid a quarter of a century ago, he might still be an ally-of-convenience in good standing against the schemes and plots of the perfidious Persians. His sons, of course, Uday and Donald Junior, were a couple of nasty pieces of work whose native viciousness, never tempered by the absence of privilege, appears to have been unredeemed by any conspicuous administrative gifts. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

At the end of his life—in the aftermath of which I am not certain his surviving people are truly enjoying a better life—the dictator left them a a final message. No doubt Stalin's self-evaluation would have been equally easy on himself (Hitler, I suspect, would have used the ink to berate the Germans for proving unworthy of his labors on their behalf), but I think it's interesting for the light it sheds on a condemned man's narrative of his own character and motives, and I get the sense that he believed it:

Many of you have known the writer of this letter to be faithful, honest, caring for others, wise, of sound judgement, just, decisive, careful with the wealth of the people and the state... and that his heart is big enough to embrace all without discrimination.

His heart aches for the poor and he does not rest until he helps in improving their condition and attends to their needs.

His heart contains all his people and his nation, and he craves to be honest and faithful without differentiating between his people except on the basis of their efforts, efficiency, and patriotism.

...

Remember that God has enabled you to become an example of love, forgiveness and brotherly co-existence...

I call on you not to hate because hate does not leave a space for a person to be fair and it makes you blind and closes all doors of thinking and keeps away one from balanced thinking and making the right choice ...

I also call on you not to hate the peoples of the other countries that attacked us and differentiate between the decision-makers and peoples...

Anyone who repents - whether in Iraq or abroad - you must forgive him...

You should know that among the aggressors, there are people who support your struggle against the invaders, and some of them volunteered for the legal defence of prisoners, including Saddam Hussein...

I found that last bit rather interesting. Given that Iraq's criminal justice system appears to have defined criminality rather broadly and to have had standards of due process well short of the minimums recognized by Amnesty International or the ACLU, he must have been astonished at the conscientious diligence of the military lawyers assigned to conduct his defense.

A bad guy—don't mistake me—but not conspicuously gamier than many of the USA's clients times past, and only marginally less distinguished if at all in points of statesmanship than his successors. And as I said, the only gravitas displayed in the moments preceding that disgraceful education was his own.

cordially,