South Africa/Iraq

In today's New York Times Dennis Ross writes:

In South Africa, less than 15 percent of the population controlled all the power and wealth and subjected the other 85 percent to a degrading, inhuman and segregated existence.

Quick, can anyone else name a county besides South Africa in which 15-20 percent of the population oppressed the rest? Give up? Try Iraq's Sunnis. Picking up on this, David Frum says:

After the end of apartheid in South Africa, nobody dared suggest that the country's new constitution institutionalize special protections for the white minority. The South African constitution did not attempt to mollify whites by declaring South Africa part of a "global community of white nations." Nor did anyone say that the new post-apartheid regime would be legitimate only if whites accepted it. The constitution protected property rights, civil rights, freedom of speech and religion -- but did so equally for everybody. And if South African whites had responded to this new equality by launching a campaign of terrorist murder against the black majority, they would have found zero sympathy. Nobody would have called them "insurgents" or demanded endless rounds of new concessions to them.

I think the analogy between South African whites and Iraq's Sunnis is an apt one. What's more, you really get the impression from some of the stories about reaction to Saddam's trial that they see no problem with the era of Saddam/Sunni rule in Iraq:

"Saddam is the lesser of evils," engineer Sahab Awad Maaruf said. "He's the only legitimate leader for Iraqis."

:

..."He's a hero, he's a tough leader," Ms. Raad, 20, an education student at Mustansiriya Univerisity, said as she reclined in black pants and a T-shirt on a sofa in her living room.

:

..."Saddam doesn't deserve all this," said Ahmad Muhammad, 31, a taxi driver. "In Halabja there was an entire Iranian army inside our land, and who helped them enter? The traitors. What should he have done other than kill the traitors and our enemies?"

:

..."This is a play produced by the occupiers," said Silfiq Azzawi, 56, another resident of Tikrit, where pro-Hussein demonstrators fired weapons into the air and chanted, "No for the trial of Saddam, but yes for the trial of the thieves!" referring to the former leader's enemies.

This is why I believe Saddam's trial is so important. These people have to acknowledge the pain and suffering caused by him, and understand that this is a chapter of Iraq's history that has finally closed, never to be reopened. Along with elections this is a vital part of undermining the insurgency by exposing in graphic detail the crimes of Saddam and the Baath party.

:

When individual witnesses take the stand to tell their stories, when evidence from the mass graves are presented, when Saddam's legacy is exposed for the gory mess it is I can't help but believe that those who express sentiments praising the ousted leader will be forced to reconsider, along with their sycophants in other Arab countries.