The death of tyrants is rarely an edifying spectacle, and Saddam Hussein’s was no exception.

Those who always opposed the invasion that was the prerequisite of his overthrow, or who have since become “retrospective doves,” are now having a field day. There has been widespread disgust at the ugly scenes of humiliation by hooded executioners before and during the hanging of Saddam.

The unseemly haste with which Prime Minister al-Maliki ordered the execution without obtaining the signatures of his president and vice presidents on the death warrant cast doubt on the due process to which the Iraqis had appeared to attach so much importance during the dictator’s trial and appeal.

Many have compared the execution to a lynching, an impression reinforced by the sectarian nature of Iraqi politics. Some have suggested that the Shiite-dominated government wanted to send a signal to the Sunni minority that lorded over them during Saddam’s dictatorship. By adding insult to injury, the Shiites wished to underline the fact that they are the masters now.

There may be some truth in any or all of this. But to dwell on the macabre details of what is a beastly business at the best of times is to miss the main point. Whatever the shortcomings of the legal process in Iraq today, they are as nothing compared to the hideous despotism that preceded the present regime.

Moreover, those who decry Iraq’s elected government as an American puppet cannot at the same time complain when its prime minister ignores the American ambassador’s request to delay the execution. The main purpose of the war was to restore freedom and independence to the Iraqi people. How their democratic leaders exercise that freedom and independence is their affair.

The truth is that in any nation that has suffered as terribly as the Iraqis, justice is bound to be equated with vengeance. Saddam had as fair a trial as was possible, given the number of terrorists who were determined to sabotage it. Indeed, several officials paid with their lives so that justice could be seen to have been done.

In two years of captivity, Saddam was not once ill treated, let alone tortured. Indeed, the night before his execution was the first time that he was forced to confront those whose families he had massacred. Even then, they did not lay a finger on him. Under the circumstances, this merciless man could count himself fortunate that he was treated more mercifully than he ever treated his victims.

In one important respect, Saddam was treated too mercifully. The decision to hand over his corpse to his tribesmen in Tikrit was unwise. The morbid adulation of even the most brutal warriors as martyrs, which is one of the most destructive facets of Islamofascism, combined with the lingering echoes of the dictator’s personality cult, may well result in Saddam’s tomb becoming a rallying point for Sunni insurgents.

Aware of this danger, the Allies ensured that after the Nazi war criminals were executed at Nuremberg, their mortal remains were incinerated and scattered to the four winds. The only exception was Rudolf Hess, who was sentenced to life imprisonment. When he died in 1987, the corpse was secretly moved from Berlin to Munich and then to an obscure churchyard at Wunsiedel in Bavaria, with the Hess family protesting that he had been murdered and youths sporting swastikas marching in hot pursuit.

Twenty years after, Wunsiedel is still a magnet for neo-Nazis. Unless the Baghdad government takes energetic countermeasures, Tikrit too will become a place of pilgrimage for Saddamites, and even more of a hotbed of sedition than it already is.

Few tyrants die peacefully in their beds. Of the last century’s great dictators, only Mao had an easy death. Because tyrannicide has generally been seen as justifiable in extremis, the execution or assassination of despots is the rule rather than the exception. The most famous murder of a dictator, that of Julius Caesar, was transfigured by contemporary historians and above all by Shakespeare into a deed carried out for the noblest of motives. But Shakespeare does not disguise the gory horror of the scene.

In the world of oriental despotism that Saddam inhabited, the ruler expected to be treated with the same barbarism as his victims. Saddam liked to compare himself to King Nebuchadnezzar, boasting that like his hero he would lead the people of Israel into Babylonian captivity. According to the prophet Daniel, however, Nebuchadnezzar was humbled by God.

One final question about Saddam was raised by one of his obituaries. Was he responsible for the deaths of more Muslims than any other ruler in history? His main rival for this grisly status is probably another Muslim: Tamerlane, who devastated Asia — from Turkey to China — at the end of the 14th century. In the absence of reliable statistics of slaughter, the question of the greatest scourge of Islam must remain undecided, but the Muslim candidates leave the non-Muslim competition out of sight.

At least Tamerlane left alongside his pyramids of skulls the great city of Samarkand and many other works of art and architecture. Saddam leaves nothing but widows and orphans.

In the archbishop of Vienna’s palace, a series of politically incorrect but rather splendid tapestries depict Tamerlane’s humiliation of Sultan Bajazet of Ottoman, whom he kept in a cage and used as a footstool. All in all, Saddam got off lightly.