I've been watching the Arabic broadcasts from Tehran, the ones the Iranian government uses to tell the Arabic speaking world what it thinks, and wants them to think. I expect if I watched the Syria broadcasts I'd be seeing similar things. It is very clear that the Iranian government approves of what happened, and they are trying to make it look like most Iraqis are happy about it too. They are showing interviews with Iraqis saying how appropriate the whole thing was; they are showing groups of Iraqis dancing in celebration, and of course they're showing old films about Saddam's atrocities to make it all look more necessary and justifiable. Iran loves to hang people, but they do it with cranes in front of people passing by on the streets. They hang people, including teenagers, for relatively minor crimes in which nobody dies, such as sexual misconduct and drug dealing. They probably don't like it that Saddam was hung privately. The Iranians also make a practice of flogging prisoners brutally before hanging them. They would have done that to Saddam too if they had been in charge of killing him.

I'm opposed to both the death penalty and identity politics. I am not moved by the fact that Saddam was hung on a Muslim holiday. It doesn't matter to me that he was Iraqi and Muslim. I'm angry because he was hung, period.