At first, those who suffered from Saddam’s cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman’s lever. So will many other Kurds and Shia outside Iraq welcome his end. But they - and millions of other Muslims - will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. “Handed over to the Iraqi authorities,” he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a “martyr” to the will of the new “Crusaders”.

Robert Fisk | Independent UK

This week began with a story of British and Iraqi soldiers storming a police station that hid a secret dungeon in Basra. More than 100 men, many of them viciously tortured, were rescued from almost certain execution. It might have been a story from the final days of Baathist rule in March 2003, when British and American troops entered Basra believing they were liberating the subjugated Shiite south. But it was December 2006, and the wretched men being liberated were prisoners of the new Iraqi Shiite authorities.

Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.

New York Times | Editorial

There is more. Military spending has skyrocketed since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, returning to Cold War levels. A devastating report by the Center for Defense Information, founded by former top-ranking admirals and generals, reveals that in the most recent federal budget overall defense spending will rise to more than $550 billion. Compare that to the $20 billion that the United Nations and all of its agencies and funds spend each year on all of its programs to make this a safer and more livable world.

That U.S. military budget exceeds what the rest of the world’s nations combined spend on defense. Nor can it be justified as militarily necessary to counter terrorists, who used primitive $10 box cutters to commandeer civilian aircraft on 9/11. It only makes sense as a field of dreams for defense contractors and their allies in Washington who seized upon the 9/11 tragedy to invent a new Cold War. Imagine their panic at the end of the old one and their glee at this newfound opportunity.

Robert Scheer | TruthDig.com

No one makes a fortune alone, without the help of our society’s investments. The moral justification for an estate tax is that some of us have disproportionately benefited from the fertile economic soil we have cultivated together.

How many billionaires land on the Forbes 400 list courtesy of our technological and scientific commons, including the Internet, airwaves, biotechnology and mechanical advances? Seeing the invisible role of the commons in individual wealth creation should foster both an attitude of gratitude and recognition of our obligation to pass on similar opportunities. Previous generations did it for us — and it is our turn to pass on the gift.

ill Gates Sr. and Chuck Collins | Miami Herald

A major buildup would commit the U.S. Army and Marine Corps to decisive combat in which there would be no more strategic reserves to be sent to the front. As Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Conway pointed out Monday, “If you commit your reserve for something other than a decisive win, or to stave off defeat, then you have essentially shot your bolt.”

It will be a matter of win or die in the attempt. In that situation, everyone in uniform on the ground will commit every ounce of their being to “victory,” and few measures will be shrunk from.

Analogies come to mind: Stalingrad, the Bulge, Dien Bien Phu, the Battle of Algiers.

W. Patrick Lang and Ray McGovern | Miami Herald

There’s something much worse than being accused of “flip-flopping”: refusing to flip when it’s obvious that your course of action is a flop.

I say this to President Bush as someone who learned the hard way how embracing the world’s complexity can be twisted into a crude political shorthand. Barbed words can make for great politics. But with U.S. troops in Iraq in the middle of an escalating civil war, this is no time for politics. Refusing to change course for fear of the political fallout is not only dangerous - it is immoral.

I’d rather explain a change of position any day than look a parent in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter had to die so that a broken policy could live

John F. Kerry | The Washington Post

Imagine, for a moment, that each of us reduced our own personal energy use by 80 percent. Families might have one car rather than two, we might drive dramatically less often — staying home rather than going to the mall, living closer to where we work — and we might travel less frequently, in all instances leaving us more time for our families, potentially more connected to our neighbors. We might choose smaller houses that are far more energy-efficient, and we’d likely be buying local — giving up our Italian sparkling water shipped halfway around the world. We might eat fruits and vegetables in season, reestablishing our relationship to the rhythm of the seasons.

We might, in short, have better, happier lives. We might have less stuff, yet closer relations with nature and our fellow human beings, and greater well-being as a result.

Climate change might, in the end, prove itself an optimal crisis. It could be among the catalytic forces — along with reaching peak oil production and other forms of ecological exhaustion — that are grave enough to break us out of our cultural trance, yet not so insurmountable as to crush our spirit. It might spur human society to the fundamental transformation that our culture so desperately needs, to move us from a culture of consumption and waste and isolation to one of sustainability and community and, yes I’ll say it, happiness.

Marjorie Kelly | Tellus Institute