The caption in Saturday's New York Times read: "An Iraqi family watched television at home in Basra on Saturday, while a video was shown of Saddam Hussein being led to the gallows. (AP Photo/Nabil Al-Jurani)"

 

I raqis like capital punishment, too. The headline on Dec. 30, 2006 NYTimes.com story by Marc Santora read On the Gallows, Curses for Traitors and U.S., but the photo above, which ran with Santora's story, shows us that instead of Ozzie and Harriet, Iraqis enjoy televised revenge.

In the great image deconstruction tradition of BagNewsNotes, this picture demands some ancillary explanations.

If I didn't read the caption, I'd think that the photo originated in America. The baby in the foreground wears a hat featuring Roman alphabet letters "ABC."

The baby likely doesn't have two daddies, it's just that in many Arab homes, the women spend much of their time in the kitchen, and not watching television. The family without context doesn't help us understand the cultural forces shaping this picture.

The television is modern, and the DVD player on top of it belies the notion of Iraqi poverty many of may carry. The fact that these "average" Iraqis have electricity works to dispel the fact that the Iraqi infrastructure is worse today than it was before 2003.

The smiling toddler pointing at the TV offers the only clue that this may be an Arabic country, because on the tube, the iconic image of Saddam in the noose appears, captioned by Arabic script.

The most likely made in China plastic sunflowers behind the little girl suggest that this could be Philadelphia, and they at least remind us of western imagery, like Van Gogh, as opposed to Middle Eastern imagery, where sunflowers grow wildly, and are cultivated along roadsides in Syria.

But mostly, this photo gives the impression that most people were happy, and by using the girl's face as the focal point, the image conveys that this execution is for the children, for the future. And that capital punishment is accepted by the world. When in fact, most countries have abandoned it as a means of punishment.

If Saddam is the Ace of Spades, the U.S. has played its trump card executing him. If we're counting, President Bush signed death warrants for 152 people as Governor of Texas, and two more as President.

Yet none of those were ever televised, as this one was. Americans never saw Karla Faye Tucker in the chambers.

This photo plays into the narrative that everyone is okay with the execution of such a heinous man. It saddened me to hear of Saddam's death. I think the death penalty is horrible, even for a murderer of Saddam's caliber.

This execution robs us of Saddam's narrative. Dead men tell no tales, and in the grand scheme of things. I would have preffered that the Iraqi authorities treated him as the Nuremburg Tribunals treated monsters like Rudolf Hoess, where after his capture, he was forced to write his autobiography. By reading this, forensic war criminologists gain insight into what makes genocidal maniacs tick.

Perhaps Saddam would have been smarter to turn himself into the International Criminal Court in the Hague (where the U.S. is not a signatory). Instead, American authorities now control Saddam's story. By pushing for Saddam's death, Bush Co. deprived us of Saddam's collected knowledge and experience. And newspapers like the Times treated us to candy-coated approvals of eye-for-an-eye politics.