I'm so proud of my local paper...
THERE ARE DIVERSE reasons for discontent with Tuesday's decision of an Iraqi appeals court upholding a death sentence for Saddam Hussein for the 1982 massacre of 182 men and boys in the Shi'ite town of Dujail. The independence of the judges who found him guilty of crimes against humanity has been questioned, as has a blatant lack of security for defense lawyers. Human-rights groups have lamented the rapidity of the judicial review conducted by the nine-judge appeals panel. And we those who oppose the death penalty in all circumstances would prefer that Saddam serve a life sentence for his crimes.
But if the work of the Iraqi High Tribunal is viewed as an opportunity to establish historical truth, then the principal objection to carrying out the death sentence within 30 days, as the tribunal's charter mandates, is of a different order. Once Saddam is hanged for the single circumscribed crime against humanity he perpetrated in Dujail, his other, genocidal crimes against the Kurds, Shi'ites, and marsh Arabs cannot be tried and judged properly in a court of law.
| Guess we'd have to leave it to the historians then, wouldn't we? Darn. Tisk. A shame. |
The current Iraqi government claims that even after Saddam is put to death, his trial for the mass murder of some 180,000 Kurds in what he called the Anfal campaign of the late 1980s will continue. But there can be no true trial if the despot is not present in the courtroom to answer charges for the killing of Kurdish villagers with nerve gas and mustard gas, the executions by firing squads of Kurdish men and boys, and the herding of Kurdish women and children into lethal concentration camps.
Without a living Saddam to confront his accusers in court -- to answer for the slaughters of Shi'ites he commanded in 1991; his assassinations of leading Shi'ite clerics and political figures; and the draining of the southern marshes that destroyed an ancient way of life for 500,000 marsh Arabs -- justice will be cheated. Iraqis will lose their best chance to sift, challenge, and judge the evidence of Saddam's major crimes against humanity. They will lose the only opportunity they will ever have to prove a crucial historical truth by legal means.
| Justice is cheated, how exactly? Is there really any doubt about this? Will the marsh Arabs curse the hangman and say that they've been cheated out of justice? Not hardly. |
That Iraqis need to have that truth validated is evident in each day's tragic toll of Sunnis killed for being Sunnis and Shi'ites for being Shi'ites. Saddam wrapped his Ba'ath Party in an ideological veil of Arab nationalism, but the reality of his regime was known to Iraqis. There was a racist contempt behind his slaughter of Kurds, and a sectarian scorn in his massacres of Shi'ites.
Keeping Saddam around for all the trials that could be had would mean that he'd escape his rightful punishment: like Slobodan Milosevic, he'd die of old age in a comfy chateau. He'd continue to mock the courts and hatch dark plots to be carried out by his lawyers and minions.
Hang him now and let the historians settle the details of what he did. |
During his reign, Saddam sowed seeds of sectarian fear and hatred. That is a truth that both the Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites of Iraq need to recognize and accept if they are to escape the inferno of their civil war. |