A Slim Guidebook for Executing a Deposed Ruler
THE Ceausescus of Romania were dragged to their executions on Christmas Day 1989 with Nicolae singing “The Internationale” and Elena alternately directing her captors to hell and snapping at them, “I was like a mother to you.”
Or so go accounts by some of the executioners. Videotape shown on Romanian television in the aftermath records scenes from a farcical tribunal but stops as the couple are led away after they’re condemned, picking up again only after the deed is done, the bullet-pocked bodies cooling where they fell.
The event did not need cellphones and YouTube to peel back the veneer of civility.
But while there is no manual for such occasions — modern history gives us relatively few instances of absolute rulers being deposed, tried and executed — all the talk last week after the hanging of Saddam Hussein suggests that we viewers thought there was some greater codification of the protocols and proprieties than was apparent in the mocking scene that unfolded.
Read entire article at NYT
Or so go accounts by some of the executioners. Videotape shown on Romanian television in the aftermath records scenes from a farcical tribunal but stops as the couple are led away after they’re condemned, picking up again only after the deed is done, the bullet-pocked bodies cooling where they fell.
The event did not need cellphones and YouTube to peel back the veneer of civility.
But while there is no manual for such occasions — modern history gives us relatively few instances of absolute rulers being deposed, tried and executed — all the talk last week after the hanging of Saddam Hussein suggests that we viewers thought there was some greater codification of the protocols and proprieties than was apparent in the mocking scene that unfolded.