Thoughts on the Death of a Dictator
I'm not going to use this space to cheer or lament Saddam Hussein's passing. I am by no means an advocate of capital punishment but it would be unreasonable to argue that the sentence was by any means unwarranted. In fact it was probably richly deserved, and I say that begrudgingly (out of respect for certain theological obligations).
But the whole thing was a complete farce from the beginning. What other outcome could have been imagined? Could we really have expected that Saddam would have been sentenced to a long jail term, or daresay, acquitted? No. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the trial merely a pretense to give the proceeding only the thinnest shroud of legality. Even if the U.S. did not itself try Hussein, it's clear he was tried by a "victor's court" that had already decided his fate. There's also a good argument that an Iraqi court applying Iraqi law had no ground to try him, as any action he took while dictator of the country was (given the nature of the regime) legal when he undertook it, so any law criminalizing Saddam's actions would be ex post facto and the trial in itself would be illegal.
And in the end, Saddam went to the gallows for the deaths of 148 people--but he killed far more during his time in power. Both Kurds and Shiites experienced extreme reprisals under the Baathist regime, from the anfal campaign against Kurdistan in the Iran-Iraq War to the brutal suppression of a (U.S.-backed) Shiite uprising in Basra after the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam never faced justice for these, although no one will doubt they indeed took place.
So we should ask ourselves whether allowing Saddam to be tried by the Iraqis was really the most effective means of holding a trial. (Of course, if you just wanted the man done away with, it seemed that was a pretty safe way to go.) But as we've seen in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, war crimes tribunals can form an important part of a national reconciliation programme between ethnic groups. It would have been much more productive to form a UN-administered Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with the Hussein trial at its center at a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. Each ethnic group would then have been able to air its grievances against the deposed dictator in appeals to international law and convention. But, of course, that would have required an admission by the Bush administration that international law is relevant, and we just can't have that.
So, in the end: (begrudgingly) agree with the outcome, but flawed execution (pun intended).
But the whole thing was a complete farce from the beginning. What other outcome could have been imagined? Could we really have expected that Saddam would have been sentenced to a long jail term, or daresay, acquitted? No. The outcome was a foregone conclusion, and the trial merely a pretense to give the proceeding only the thinnest shroud of legality. Even if the U.S. did not itself try Hussein, it's clear he was tried by a "victor's court" that had already decided his fate. There's also a good argument that an Iraqi court applying Iraqi law had no ground to try him, as any action he took while dictator of the country was (given the nature of the regime) legal when he undertook it, so any law criminalizing Saddam's actions would be ex post facto and the trial in itself would be illegal.
And in the end, Saddam went to the gallows for the deaths of 148 people--but he killed far more during his time in power. Both Kurds and Shiites experienced extreme reprisals under the Baathist regime, from the anfal campaign against Kurdistan in the Iran-Iraq War to the brutal suppression of a (U.S.-backed) Shiite uprising in Basra after the 1991 Gulf War. Saddam never faced justice for these, although no one will doubt they indeed took place.
So we should ask ourselves whether allowing Saddam to be tried by the Iraqis was really the most effective means of holding a trial. (Of course, if you just wanted the man done away with, it seemed that was a pretty safe way to go.) But as we've seen in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, war crimes tribunals can form an important part of a national reconciliation programme between ethnic groups. It would have been much more productive to form a UN-administered Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with the Hussein trial at its center at a war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. Each ethnic group would then have been able to air its grievances against the deposed dictator in appeals to international law and convention. But, of course, that would have required an admission by the Bush administration that international law is relevant, and we just can't have that.
So, in the end: (begrudgingly) agree with the outcome, but flawed execution (pun intended).