A Saddam Hussein Christmas . . .

If You’re Reading This On Christmas Day . . .

. . . there’s a fairly good chance you’re having somewhat less than an optimal Christmas day. Perhaps you are far away from your loved ones. Perhaps you are trying to get far away from your alleged loved ones, mentally, if not physically.

Or perhaps there aren’t any loved ones around, near or far.

If that’s the case, perhaps you’re a bit down in the dumps about the whole matter, and watching It’s A Wonderful Life isn’t going to help.

Time for a different approach. Look at the bright side. No matter how bad you think things are, at least you’re not Saddam Hussein.

A Saddam Hussein Christmas

Now there’s somebody having a lousy Christmas!

And it’s not like he’s got anything to look forward to.

A year ago, he could buy just about any Christmas present he wanted. Now, the only people he can even get a candy cane from are the people he fought two wars against.

The best present they might give him is to just not interrogate him today, and if that happens, that will just be because the interrogators want to have a nice Christmas.

Actually, he already got his big Christmas present from the Americans. They didn’t give him a lump of coal, they refrained from turning him into a lump of coal when they captured him.

Not much of a present, you must admit.

Not like his family can come visit and comfort him. His sons who were supposed to continue his dynasty are in a grave. The rest are either under surveillance, in hiding, or in prison. Well, maybe not the one who likely turned him in.

You think you have a dysfunctional family?

When you go to war against a country twice, and spend the time inbetween doing annoying things like trying to kill the man who launched the first war against you (and just so happens to be the dad of the guy who launched the second war against you), this doesn’t exactly give your enemy a lot of warm and fuzzy feelings about you.

But when even your enemy would agree that their problems with you are trifles compared to the gripe your own people have against you, when your enemy is your friend compared to your countrymen, when even Santa probably wants you to die, that’s pretty bad.

They’d sentence you to death, of course, and that would be bad enough for most people. In your case, though, when you were the one doing the killing, your idea of a mercy killing was putting somebody in the shredder head first rather than feet first.

Given the example you set, what would you deserve?

Not too many people would find a hanging relatively good, but you’re not just anybody.

And that’s really your core problem.

When the judges ask you, “Why did you do all that bad stuff?” it’s really redundant, because you’ve answered that already in happier times. You just wanted to be important. You wanted to be remembered in the history books forever as one of the great men of history, like your ancient townsman Saladin, and you did whatever it took to achieve that.

And you probably still don’t see, deep-down inside, what you did about it that was so wrong.

Talk about being self-centered!

How Does Your Life Look Now?

I bet your gripes and complaints look pretty tiny in comparison to Saddam’s. You may not be having a great time, or even a good time, but it’s pretty hard to imagine anybody reading this who could truthfully say, “He’s better off than me.”

So cheer up! If things look bad to you, just think of Saddam, and know what bad really is.

Ed