I'll be gone for a few days, so this is my last post of the year. I wanted to write about Tabbatha and Paul, and the joy they've brought into my life, and how a year that began so terribly could end so well.
Because it began, of course, with Mom's death, sorrow unimagined, and the event that propelled me forward to writing again, that led to this very site. Whatever it has become over these months, it has been due to Mom, to the gifts she gave me and the heart she always shared. And though it's sad that she will never meet Tabbatha, it's okay, the circle of life, one door closes and another opens, all that sentimental jazz.
Yeah, it'd be nice to go on at some length about all the good things in my life, and I was going to do that. Then they went and hanged Saddam.
Saddam Hussein, loyal friend to the U.S., willing to do whatever dirty work we needed done, somehow became Public Enemy Number One. His capture and trial was opposed by many Iraqis, his execution, coming on the eve of a Muslim holiday, angered many more.
None of that mattered, though, because what the Iraqi people want and what they get are two different things. This is the democracy we've brought them, and if it looks suspiciously like what they lived with under Saddam, with cruel punishments for breaking seemingly arbitrary rules, well, exactly. Life sucks, and the world is ruled by terrible forces we can't begin to understand. Get used to it.
With Saadams's death comes the inevitable words of wisdom from Our Beloved President. (Not that Bush bothered to stay awake when the guy he all but claimed as responsible for 9/11 finally rang the bell. He went to bed, and his aides didn't think it was important enough to wake him. Christ, given all the rhetoric, you'd have figured The Decider would have been there in person.) In a written statement, Bush wrote that Saddam "was executed after receiving a fair trial--the kind of justice he denied victims of his brutal regime."
I'm sure all the detainees at Gitmo appreciate your sense of irony, Mr. President.
And that's the way it is, Saturday, December 30th, 2006. For me, the year ends with guarded optimism. For the bigger world, the same old depressing shit. Whatever your circumstances, wherever you may be, whoever you are, happy new year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.
