OPINION

Sensitive Europeans

Old Europe blushed and shuddered like a coy maiden at the sight of the vile hanging of Iraq’s former president. «Look at the barbarity,» said the newly sensitive Europeans. «Look at the shameless people in Baghdad,» said the media. «Look at what those politically ignorant people across the Atlantic are doing,» they said. Some who just three years ago greeted the «dawn of democracy» in Mesopotamia were cautiously silent, bearing in mind the half a million Iraqis who have been killed during the «democratization» process. In the meeting rooms and salons of the European elite, the newly sensitive are horrified, invoking European civilization as a counterpoint to the barbarity beyond its shores. They invoke the abolition of the death penalty in the European Union as a condition for entry into the «European family.» And bury their heads in the sand. They feign ignorance of postwar political executions in Europe and the continuing political justification for some of them even today. An Iraqi official in the puppet occupation government recalled that Mussolini’s trial lasted «only a minute,» meaning he was executed without a trial. He reminded millions of Italians of the truly gruesome sight of the Italian dictator’s body hung upside-down alongside that of his unfortunate mistress. Naturally many millions of Italians would have recalled Leftist leader Massimo d’Alema’s statement last year that Mussolini should have had a trial. Many Europeans have said that Saddam Hussein’s execution will speed up the disintegration of Iraq. Others deplored the fact that Saddam was executed on a Muslim religious holiday. They forget that as recently as 1989, Europeans rejoiced at the parody of a trial and the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife on Christmas Day. It is these civilized people of Europe who are now throwing up their hands in horror.

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