A Silly Lord of the Rings Analogy for Today

Today’s capture reminded me of a scene from Tolkien, although it’s not the Lord of the Rings, it’s from The Silmarillion. I suppose it may be a bit silly to use this as a reference to Saddam Hussein, but it sounds oddly familiar to his capture. This passage comes from the chapter titled Of The Voyage of Earendil and describes the capture of Morgoth, who was Sauron’s leader during the First Age of Middle Earth:
… and all of the pits of Morgoth were broken and unroofed, and the might of the Valar descended into the deeps of the earth. There Morgoth stood at last at bay, and yet unvaliant. He fled into the deepest of his mines, and sued for peace and pardon; but his feet were hewn from under him, and he was hurled upon his face. Then he was bound with the chain Angainor which he had worn aforetime, and his iron crown was beaten into a collar for his neck, and his head was bowed upon his knees.
Unvaliant, indeed … his sons died fighting, a tactically stupid thing to do but a mistake that only hastened their eventual fate. Saddam, who had vowed never to be taken alive, did not even draw the pistol he carried when he was caught, and instead surrendered meekly. The Valar thrust Morgoth “through the Door of Night beyond the Walls of the World, and into the Timeless Void“; I suspect the Iraqis have something similar in mind, if less literary and more literal.
Note: this was my 600th post since starting CQ 10 weeks ago. Thanks to all who visit!

6 thoughts on “A Silly Lord of the Rings Analogy for Today”

  1. in honor of Dr. Gene Scott…

    My favorite conservative Captain Ed has a post comparing Saddam’s capture to a scene in The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien. Does life imitate art, or the other way around? Perhaps some stories are eternal. If so, why should we be

  2. THOUGHTS ON THE CAPTURE OF SADDAM

    If you want to know what effect the capture of Saddam will have, you need only look back to the day Saddam’s statue fell in Baghdad, and multiply that by a factor of several thousand. When Saddam’s statue fell, I…

  3. BBC on Saddam’s Capture

    Comrade John Kampfner and other loyal MiniTruth comrades at BBC will cover Saddam’s capture thus: Saddam Hussein became an icon of the war, and the story of his capture by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments…

  4. Obligatotory LOTR reference…

    What can I say? I gotta be me… And as the Captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling…

Comments are closed.