Why I wont be celebrating Saddam's execution So, the inevitable has happened. Saddam Hussein is to be killed - most probably hanged, in theory, because of the reulsive and depraved violations carried out under his reign of terror. Yesterday the Iraqi Special Tribunal sentenced him to death for the massacre he perpetrated in Dujail in 1982, what the court found to be a crime against humanity. Yet in truth Saddam was in the dock for misunderstanding the boundaries of his alliance with the West, more specifically Washington, and invading Kuwait eight years later. Then, and only then, did his crimes have any significance to the West. He immediately transformed from a bulwark against Iran into a bogeyman, and after the crushing defeat of the Gulf War, a mosquito that his well armed enemies could have swatted any time. One of the many sad facts of this saga is that when we chose to, in 2003, our governments had to lie to their people, exaggerate his status and trash and exempt themselves from international law to do it. Neither the fact that the West armed and backed him during his worst crimes, nor the reported 650,000 Iraqi deaths in this shame of a war can ever be glossed over.

I hate the death penalty and I hate to see people rejoicing over a person's death, even a tyrant. While one cannot tell this to the Iraqis and assorted others [now - before we trash their country - could be a good time to emphasise that Iranians are people too] that suffered his maniacal treatment, others have no excuse. To see Margaret Beckett pop up on TV with her crazy grin is never fun for those of us with an aversion to mad scientists and serial killers. But to have it accompanied with her abhorrent comments that the judgement, which violated so many domestic and European standards that courts in Britain would have to observe, is "right" because it is "Iraqi justice" is too much. Hanging would be appalling if it happened in Britain today, why is it good enough for an Iraqi nation that needs to put its years of brutality behind it?
Two very stupid and lightweight points have been raised in the media about the side benefits of a possible public lynching.

The first is that killing Saddam will bring about "closure". Robert Fisk, who truly is worth his weight in gold, dealt with this idea a year ago. While there were scenes of jubilation at the sentence yesterday, the lives of the Iraqi people will not be improved in any way whatsoever by this sentence being carried out. Saddam is old news and whatever happens, is not coming back to haunt people afflicted by civil war and humanitarian disaster who nowadays live perilous lives, not knowing if the will ever return every time they leave their homes. The fact that Number 10 and the White House [who have almost certainly had a hand in scheduling this trial for the mid-term election period, desparately hoping to bask in such demagougery - a trick that was never going to work now that even the assorted creatures of the undead composing the lunatic neocon fringe have began to disown the war] want us to believe that this morally questionable ray of sunshine will make the lives of the Iraqis better shows once again just how little they care about their needs.

The second mistaken belief is that a good dose of justice in Iraq, in what Washington reportedly had seen as "the petri dish" for a new kind of interventionist foreign policy, would convince other tyrants from committing their heinous acts. Yet Saddam's trial has come about after a chain of events resulting from the invasion of Kuwait [indeed, in itself a crime - the crime of aggression, which Bush, Blair and Aznar committed in 2003 and in the Nuremberg trial was punishable by death]. In the domestic arena that is the equivalent of the police waiting for a criminal to tread on their toes before they detain a criminal. Had Saddam been referred to the ICC as part of a new era of international justice then that would have been encouraging. But Saddams' road to justice was carried out against the tide of international law by a Bush administration that has set back this potential new era by rejecting, stigmatising and trying to dodge the ICC.
Ehud Olmert and Ariel Sharon need not fear justice because they are protected from international law by the US, a state so monstrously powerful that it can largely live outside the realm of international law. The members of the oppresive regimes and dangerous militants in Burma, the DRC and Tonga will not face justice becuase their crimes are below the radar. And Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong il and, of course Bush and Blair themselves, are too well armed to pay for their crimes. Saddam committed [some of his] crimes as a weak, Washington-hated leader in arguably the most strategically important region in the world. That is not encouraging for other oppressed people of the world who might also want some justice and "closure". The best way to help them is to back the ICC and set about bringing justice in a coordinated, principled fashion so that more people go the way of Charles Taylor.

Nothing good or new will come of this. The death penalty was long expected, but never awaited as some solution for the battered people of Iraq. Their problems will only begin to recede when we listen to them. The vast majority now want our troops out of their country. And after we pull them out, maybe we can think about the accountability of our leaders.  ¶ posted by the leech at 11/06/2006