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A guest post from Josh Trevino:

Question: is any major event not fodder for the online left's complaints about the Administration of George W. Bush? They are, to be sure, by and large obsessive cultists in form and effect; but surely reason may kick in at points. One gets the impression of a class of people who wake up, drink their coffee, go to shave, cut themselves, and promptly curse the war in Iraq. The monomania simply does not end -- and the execution of Saddam Hussein is no different. I have already expressed my dislike for executions: but I also retain the bare capacity for rationality that allows me to understand the end of the dictator as a fundamental good.

The leftist "netroots"? Not so much.

A quick survey of what's up front at DailyKos right now -- c.9:30pm PDT -- yields a slew of reader diaries denouncing the execution of Saddam Hussein(!), and/or using it as a jumping-off point to circle against the real enemy. That's George W. Bush, of course. A sampling follows -- and these are the diaries, not the comments:

I want the whole world to be reminded that Saddam's evil excesses were made possible with the aid of BushCo officials.

[P]lease tell me what f------ moral standing does the US (or any other country for that matter) have to go into another country and do what we just did to Saddam? The fact that it is the US - that "shining beacon of freedom" is even worse. What does that say? What message does that send? And who made us World Police anyway? This is a mockery of justice.

Why would I write an obituary for Saddam Hussein? Because he was a human being. He did some horrible things while he was alive, but he was still human. By murdering him we have become no better than he was.

The administration will, in due course, stand to account for a war crime committed in Iraq by executing the Iraqi dictator.

There a lot of great diaries about the execution of Saddam. However, in the few that I've read, little emphasis has been placed on the real reason Saddam had to be executed now, before the New Year ... Politics and the rush to war, this time Iran, compels Bush to execute Saddam now. Bush will squint and glare towards Iran with...Saddam Swinging as Visual Backdrop....

So, overall, did my life change with the execution of Saddam? Only time will tell... if South Park does a really funny episode on it that I can watch on YouTube, I think I can say yes. Otherwise, no. My life is no different in a world without Saddam.

Recall that when the President was still governor of Texas, he never met a death sentence he didn’t like. Uh isn’t that the same sort of justice that cost Saddam his life? ... Saddam’s regime was found guilty of killing 148 Shiite villagers. The purpose of those deaths reportedly was to suppress insurrection ... Now let’s turn our attention to Iraq as it stands today. Most estimates place the number of Iraqi casualties – even those not associated with the military – at somewhere in the neighborhood of 150,000. This number makes Saddam look like a piker.

I write this assuming that the early reports are true, that Saddam Hussein has been hanged by the neck until he was dead, dead, dead. Do you think George Bush even stayed up for this? Heck, he sleeps well as it is, so why would he even bother staying up for the execution of the man responsible for...what was it?

Admittedly, DailyKos is not exactly a known font of patriotic feeling or good sense, and there's a sense that the powers there are vaguely aware of this. (The site's founder and proprietor, false bravado about "vindication" to the contrary, has a permanent redirect in place for the direct link to his infamous "screw them" comment deriding dead Americans in Fallujah -- it's in this diary, and you have to scroll down to find it.) To that end, frontpager mcjoan -- who, full disclosure, I rather like -- restricts herself to a sensible, "Would that this could bring peace to the people of Iraq." A single diary begs the dKos community to cut the apologist crap, to no avail -- as of this writing, his attendant user poll has George W. Bush as "more evil" than Saddam Hussein.

A brief look-through of the other major left-blogs reveals little better. Again, a blow-by-blow listing seems appropriate:

Digby moans that she wonders "what would have happened if the US had behaved like a world leader and sent [Hussein] to be tried in the International Criminal Court instead of having the 'Iraqi government' (which clearly has no real legal system) stage a show trial and now execute him in the middle of a civil war." (Ed. note: What is the rationale under which a thing is legitimate because it is "international"?)

Josh Marshall whines about the gap between official rhetoric and deeds, and pronounces the execution of the dictator to be "a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation have been."

Duncan Black stand-in "Attaturk" declares that the death of Hussein is an example "of what 700,000 lives and half-a-trillion dollars can get you nowadays."

Matthew Yglesias mourns that it's "Sad to see even something as justice for a major-league war criminal rendered tawdry by this administration." He then follows up with an outrageous lie: namely, that Saddam was not tried for the "Anfal Campaign ... in order to spare Donald Rumsfeld embarrassment." As if Donald Rumsfeld was in any way responsible for the genocide of the Kurds; and as if the BBC simply fabricated this timeline of -- Saddam Hussein's trial for the Anfal Campaign!

Robert Farley at least has the good sense to recognize that Saddam Hussein was, you know, bad, but tries to save his netroots cred with a lengthy disclaimer: "I don't think his ouster was worth the bones of a single Prussian Grenadier, I'm sure that his execution will have no effect on the course of events in Iraq, I wish that his trial had been conducted according to international standard, and I don't believe in the death penalty."

As it happens, I actually agree with Farley, to varying degrees, on all those points -- but what a pity this is the price for maintaining good standing with the "netroots" crowd. A man can't say it's good to see the tyrant gone, and be done with it.

But then, they don't think the real tyrant is the man who hung today. That is their peculiar madness: an inability to see a fundamental good done without the reflexive, "Yes, but...." They think it a function of their power of perspicacity, but it is nothing more than the very thing that drove the dead man himself: the marriage of persistent paranoia, and enduring hate.