Just over three years after Saddam Hussein emerged from his spider hole in Iraq, the Iraqi people finally will have vengeance. Saddam attempted, with some success, to transform his trial into political theater, using it as a platform to speak against the American occupation and inspire Ba'athist remnants to conduct terrorist attacks. Despite several members of the court being assassinated or attacked, the tribunal convicted Saddam for crimes consistent with the evidence. But the New York Times isn't happy:
The important question was never really about whether Saddam Hussein was guilty of crimes against humanity. The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners.
What really mattered was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future. A carefully conducted, scrupulously fair trial could have helped undo some of the damage inflicted by his rule. It could have set a precedent for the rule of law in a country scarred by decades of arbitrary vindictiveness. It could have fostered a new national unity in an Iraq long manipulated through its religious and ethnic divisions.
It could have, but it didn’t. After a flawed, politicized and divisive trial, Mr. Hussein was handed his sentence: death by hanging. This week, in a cursory 15-minute proceeding, an appeals court upheld that sentence and ordered that it be carried out posthaste. Most Iraqis are now so preoccupied with shielding their families from looming civil war that they seem to have little emotion left to spend on Mr. Hussein or, more important, on their own fading dreams of a new and better Iraq.
This is comical. The New York Times wants a trial that doesn't "rush" to judgment of his "vile and unforgivable atrocities" because it won't "nurture hope" or create "a new and better Iraq." Yet, the purpose of trials is not to nurture hope but rather to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused. Trials serve to protect society and work as a deterrent. But the Times simply complains about a verdict and sentence that even they admit is justified by the evidence. To echo various other bloggers, perhaps the Times should not "rush" to opine.
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