No Nuremberg, this November 8, 2006
THE verdict was scarcely electrifying. After nine months, Iraq’s High Tribunal finally sentenced Saddam Hussein to hang for crimes against humanity, specifically the slaughter of 148 people in one town in revenge killings after an attempt on his life in 1982. Nor was the result electrifying, Saddam’s fellow Sunnis fomenting more violence on their already violence-torn country in response to it.
If the people who produced, directed and acted on this movie thought it would move the world to tears, they have another think coming. That is what US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, for one thinks, or says. “[It] demonstrates the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them (Saddam and his co-defendants) accountable. Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future.”
What arrant nonsense. If the trial itself, not to speak of the verdict, moves the world to tears, it is only to tears of frustration and anger, not to tears of joy or gratitude. This does not restore the moral order of the universe, it unhinges it, sending humanity’s concept of right and wrong spinning out of its orbit. To paraphrase Khalilzad, this verdict -- and indeed the trial itself -- demonstrates the commitment of the Bush administration to exculpate itself and justify a bloodbath of its making. Although it may find a cause for much toasting in the next few days, using Saddam as scapegoat will only rouse more unrest in Iraq and cast a pall on the rest of the world.
Oh yes, the United States is every inch involved in this. To say that the trial is a purely local affair, a quest by the Iraqis themselves for justice from a madman, is to say that the trial of Macario Sakay and company at the dawn of the previous century was a purely local affair, a quest by the Filipinos themselves for justice from rebels and insurgents. The US occupation of Iraq today, as much as the US occupation of the Philippines then, belies that.
On the face of it, I have no problem with Saddam being found guilty of war crimes. Who likes Saddam Hussein anyway? Who doesn’t believe (apart from his loyal fanatics) that he is a thug and a mass murderer? But I have one very huge problem with the credentials of the people trying him. I have one very enormous problem with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s engineering this -- to quote Ramsey Clark, Saddam’s counsel -- travesty.
This is no Nuremberg. Nuremberg wasn’t just about the depth of atrocity wreaked by the Nazis, it was about the relative decency of those who sat in judgment over them. Of course, there were complaints then about the hypocrisy of the Western powers presuming to do so, they being just as guilty of slaughter, not least the US with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But at best the complaints were debatable, and at worst they were non-comparable. When the trial finished, the world did not just sigh with relief, it wept with the realization that justice can be, and had been, done.
Nor is this the Slobodan Milosevic trial, the second time the world moved to punish people who had committed crimes that cried out to heaven for appeasement. The United Nations-sponsored trial at the Hague was as close to heaven as the victims’ kin could get on earth. Even though Milosevic escaped justice by dying in his cell (officially from ill-health, though his lawyers claimed he had been poisoned), the world again sighed with relief and the victims’ kin wept in the realization that justice had been done.
There is nothing of the spirit of those two landmark trials in this. At the very least, why the United States never lifted a hand or even voiced a protest when Saddam was doing all these things in the 1980s adds selective perception to selective justice. Maybe because at the time the United States was busy arming Saddam to fight off Ayatollah Khomeini who had the temerity to oust the US protégé in Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi? Enough to ignore the fact that Saddam was also turning his murderous energies toward the Kurds and wreaking genocide on them?
At the very most, where is the justice in crucifying a vicious thug with a villainous-looking beard for wreaking a bloodbath on a town but not a bigger thug with a clean-shaven but cretinous-looking face for wreaking an even bigger bloodbath on a whole nation? Saddam got back at his presumed assassins and their families and their families’ families out of pique. Bush deliberately and systematically lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to his countrymen, to his allies and to the world (one is tempted to add “to himself,” but I doubt he knows the difference between lying to himself and not) and with the aid of his British poodle, Tony Blair, brought the apocalypse upon an unsuspecting country. Osama bin Laden razed the Twin Towers, and Bush got back at Saddam.
What to do when the leader of a backward country butchers a hundred or so civilians? Hang him. What to do when the leader of the most powerful country on earth butchers thousands of civilians on the basis of a lie? Say, “Ay mali.” [“Oops, wrong.”]
The verdict on Saddam does not shout justice, it shouts justification. It means to justify the American occupation of Iraq, notwithstanding the deception it was founded on, by reminding the world what a bastard Saddam is. And what a service Bush did the world by invading his country, raining bombs as smart as Bush is on the residents of Baghdad, and unleashing policies of mass destruction on a world the American Caesar (of the Las Vegas variety) barely understands and a people he couldn’t care about. Of course, Saddam is a bastard. But there’s a bigger bastard halfway across the globe, and there’s no court trying him.
What, you just punish him by beating him in elections?
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=31171
If the people who produced, directed and acted on this movie thought it would move the world to tears, they have another think coming. That is what US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, for one thinks, or says. “[It] demonstrates the commitment of the Iraqi people to hold them (Saddam and his co-defendants) accountable. Although the Iraqis may face difficult days in the coming weeks, closing the book on Saddam and his regime is an opportunity to unite and build a better future.”
What arrant nonsense. If the trial itself, not to speak of the verdict, moves the world to tears, it is only to tears of frustration and anger, not to tears of joy or gratitude. This does not restore the moral order of the universe, it unhinges it, sending humanity’s concept of right and wrong spinning out of its orbit. To paraphrase Khalilzad, this verdict -- and indeed the trial itself -- demonstrates the commitment of the Bush administration to exculpate itself and justify a bloodbath of its making. Although it may find a cause for much toasting in the next few days, using Saddam as scapegoat will only rouse more unrest in Iraq and cast a pall on the rest of the world.
Oh yes, the United States is every inch involved in this. To say that the trial is a purely local affair, a quest by the Iraqis themselves for justice from a madman, is to say that the trial of Macario Sakay and company at the dawn of the previous century was a purely local affair, a quest by the Filipinos themselves for justice from rebels and insurgents. The US occupation of Iraq today, as much as the US occupation of the Philippines then, belies that.
On the face of it, I have no problem with Saddam being found guilty of war crimes. Who likes Saddam Hussein anyway? Who doesn’t believe (apart from his loyal fanatics) that he is a thug and a mass murderer? But I have one very huge problem with the credentials of the people trying him. I have one very enormous problem with George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s engineering this -- to quote Ramsey Clark, Saddam’s counsel -- travesty.
This is no Nuremberg. Nuremberg wasn’t just about the depth of atrocity wreaked by the Nazis, it was about the relative decency of those who sat in judgment over them. Of course, there were complaints then about the hypocrisy of the Western powers presuming to do so, they being just as guilty of slaughter, not least the US with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But at best the complaints were debatable, and at worst they were non-comparable. When the trial finished, the world did not just sigh with relief, it wept with the realization that justice can be, and had been, done.
Nor is this the Slobodan Milosevic trial, the second time the world moved to punish people who had committed crimes that cried out to heaven for appeasement. The United Nations-sponsored trial at the Hague was as close to heaven as the victims’ kin could get on earth. Even though Milosevic escaped justice by dying in his cell (officially from ill-health, though his lawyers claimed he had been poisoned), the world again sighed with relief and the victims’ kin wept in the realization that justice had been done.
There is nothing of the spirit of those two landmark trials in this. At the very least, why the United States never lifted a hand or even voiced a protest when Saddam was doing all these things in the 1980s adds selective perception to selective justice. Maybe because at the time the United States was busy arming Saddam to fight off Ayatollah Khomeini who had the temerity to oust the US protégé in Iran, Reza Shah Pahlavi? Enough to ignore the fact that Saddam was also turning his murderous energies toward the Kurds and wreaking genocide on them?
At the very most, where is the justice in crucifying a vicious thug with a villainous-looking beard for wreaking a bloodbath on a town but not a bigger thug with a clean-shaven but cretinous-looking face for wreaking an even bigger bloodbath on a whole nation? Saddam got back at his presumed assassins and their families and their families’ families out of pique. Bush deliberately and systematically lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq to his countrymen, to his allies and to the world (one is tempted to add “to himself,” but I doubt he knows the difference between lying to himself and not) and with the aid of his British poodle, Tony Blair, brought the apocalypse upon an unsuspecting country. Osama bin Laden razed the Twin Towers, and Bush got back at Saddam.
What to do when the leader of a backward country butchers a hundred or so civilians? Hang him. What to do when the leader of the most powerful country on earth butchers thousands of civilians on the basis of a lie? Say, “Ay mali.” [“Oops, wrong.”]
The verdict on Saddam does not shout justice, it shouts justification. It means to justify the American occupation of Iraq, notwithstanding the deception it was founded on, by reminding the world what a bastard Saddam is. And what a service Bush did the world by invading his country, raining bombs as smart as Bush is on the residents of Baghdad, and unleashing policies of mass destruction on a world the American Caesar (of the Las Vegas variety) barely understands and a people he couldn’t care about. Of course, Saddam is a bastard. But there’s a bigger bastard halfway across the globe, and there’s no court trying him.
What, you just punish him by beating him in elections?
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=31171
posted by dqfan06 @ 8:20 AM
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