Charles Krauthammer has an excellent column entitled "Beyond Travesty" that discusses the mess that was the execution of Saddam Hussein.
When Saddam was executed I felt no real joy or happiness. More disturbingly I felt no sense of justice. That is not to say that executing Saddam was a miscarriage of justice -- far from it -- but the manner in which it happened was deeply flawed.
When Saddam was dragged out of his hole 3 years ago I felt elated. For the first time in recorded history, at least as far as I can tell, the leader of a country would have to answer for crimes against humanity. It wasn't that Saddam was to be executed that excited me, it was that he would have to face justice. Victims of his crimes would be able to confront him. Every wrong that he visited upon his people would be replayed for the whole world, and the enormity of his misrule laid bare for the world to see. Then, after he had been exposed for the monster he is, a united Iraq would dispatch him to a just fate.
As Krauthammer notes, this is not what took place:
When Saddam was executed I felt no real joy or happiness. More disturbingly I felt no sense of justice. That is not to say that executing Saddam was a miscarriage of justice -- far from it -- but the manner in which it happened was deeply flawed.
When Saddam was dragged out of his hole 3 years ago I felt elated. For the first time in recorded history, at least as far as I can tell, the leader of a country would have to answer for crimes against humanity. It wasn't that Saddam was to be executed that excited me, it was that he would have to face justice. Victims of his crimes would be able to confront him. Every wrong that he visited upon his people would be replayed for the whole world, and the enormity of his misrule laid bare for the world to see. Then, after he had been exposed for the monster he is, a united Iraq would dispatch him to a just fate.
As Krauthammer notes, this is not what took place:
...Maliki's rush to execute short-circuited the judicial process that was at the time considering Hussein's crimes against the Kurds. He was hanged for the killing of 148 men and boys in the Shiite village of Dujail. This was a perfectly good starting point -- a specific incident as a prelude to an inquiry into the larger canvas of his crimes. The trial for his genocidal campaign against the Kurds was just beginning.
That larger canvas will never be painted. The starting point became the endpoint. The only charge for which Hussein was executed was that 1982 killing of Shiites -- interestingly, his response to a failed assassination attempt by Maliki's Dawa Party.
Maliki ultimately got his revenge, completing Dawa's mission a quarter-century later. However, Saddam Hussein will now never be tried for the Kurdish genocide, the decimation of the Marsh Arabs, the multiple war crimes and all the rest.
The Iraqi government took something that could have united Iraq -- a shared disgust and loathing for Saddam -- and managed to turned it into something divisive in order to further its narrow agenda. Just read the reactions from these Iraqi bloggers (via the excellent Healing Iraq blog).
Even worse, the openly sectarian nature of the execution managed to make Saddam, who portrayed himself as a staunch nationalist, look good in comparison. What a disgrace.
Even worse, the openly sectarian nature of the execution managed to make Saddam, who portrayed himself as a staunch nationalist, look good in comparison. What a disgrace.
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