Wayne Wood makes with the funny.

While we were reading the weekend papers my wife looked up from what she was reading and asked "What do you reckon they should do if they capture Saddam Hussein?" I replied "The British forces should take all six imposters, line them up against the wall and shoot them out of hand. After executing all the lookalikes they should round up the whole of SH's family; brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, nephews etc, 'unto the biblical seventh generation', and execute the lot. Totally raze Tiklit and remove every mention of the dictator and his family. Capture the whole lot on video and send copies to Al-Jazeera with instructions that this fate will befall everyone who threatens any and every form of terrorism in the future. Only by being thoroughly ruthless is there a reasonable probability they will eliminate the establishment of Saddam as a martyr."
At this point I should declare that I am absolutely and totally against this war.

HA! Actually, no, I won't laugh cos that would be rude and I otherwise do see the point of what he says in the rest of the post. I just found the conjunction of that opening paragraph and the first line of the next one amusing. The problem I have with his idea is that if you want to avoid making a martyr of someone you need to entirely wipe out all memory of them. As long as someone remembers the existence of Saddam Hussein and remembers what the (excuse me while I choke on the catchphrase) Coalition of the Willing did in Iraq, there's the possibility that someone will make a martyr of him. To completely extirpate all traces of a person's historical being from the record, to erase all memory of them... I personally can't even begin to imagine the effort that would require, and frankly I shudder at the thought of it. Which is why I suspect for all the carnage Wayne envisages, it still wouldn't work...

posted by James Russell | 6:16 PM