Leading article: An execution that will do nothing to quell the violence on
Iraq’s streets
The trial was a travesty of justice. To hang Saddam now is also to leave his
second trial unfinished
The Independent/UK
30 December 2006
Saddam Hussein awaited his imminent end last night, sentenced to hang
for crimes against humanity. His last hours were punctuated by the
necessary rituals: the signature on the death warrant from Iraq’s
Prime Minister; the leave-taking from his closest relatives; the
handover of his last will and testament, the release of a valedictory
letter to Iraqis, and, at the last, his transfer from US into Iraqi
custody, so that his own people could do the deed.
That the US and British invasion of Iraq would entail the death of
Saddam Hussein had a grim inevitability. So far as Washington was
concerned, the purpose of their whole enterprise was "regime
change". The question was never whether Saddam would die, but when,
how and by whose hand. The toppling of his statue in central Baghdad –
transparently orchestrated by the American occupiers – was a grisly
precursor of what was to come. As indeed, we now see, was the
ambivalence with which Iraq hailed his downfall.
It was all of a piece of this headstrong autocrat that he resisted to
the last. As the planning for the US invasion reached its height, he
rejected all offers of exile, preferring to stay in Iraq. He was
captured alive in the most demeaning of circumstances, and further
humiliated by his US captors in clips that were beamed around the
world. He stood trial, by turns insisting belligerently on his right
to a proper defence and refusing to recognise the authority of the
court. Would that those who had suffered from his rule had been
dignified with a fraction of the respect that he was accorded by the
court.
>From the outset, though, there was no doubt about either the verdict
or the sentence. And in the end, he faced death as a disgraced leader
and common criminal. He lacked the courage to die as the warrior he
had set himself up to be.
Saddam Hussein does not deserve to be mourned. He had come to power in
violence. His rule was capricious and cruel. The roll of his victims
is long, from the Kurds in the north, to the Marsh Arabs in the south,
via Shia clerics and political opponents. He was ruthless in his
determination to cling to power, and he ordered the unprovoked
invasion of Kuwait. Yet the manner of his demise reflects poorly on
the Western powers that ousted him. Saddam was a creature of the
United States. He was armed and encouraged by Washington in earlier
times, in an effort to balance the regional power of Iran. What
balance there might have been is now shattered. Iran is in the
ascendant. Iraq itself is in chaos and no exercise in democracy has
been able to override its divisions. The country has an elected
president, prime minister and parliament, but these institutions lack
the authority to wield power effectively.
It is understandable that Iraqis preferred to try Saddam themselves
rather than deliver him to the International Criminal Court. This
would have been the preferable course. As it was, the trial was a
travesty of justice. To hang Saddam now is also to leave his second
trial, arguably the more important one, unfinished. The Kurds will not
now have the satisfaction of seeing the murderer of their kinsmen
judged for that heinous crime.
There was a time when the death of Saddam might have been a solution
of a kind. It might have been a clean break with the past, offering
Iraq a new beginning. An open trial might have embodied the start of
the rule of law. An execution might have united Iraqis. Regrettably –
and to the eternal disgrace of the occupying powers – it will resolve
nothing in the vortex that is today’s Iraq.