Of Pirates and Emperors

December 30th, 2006 at 14:21 Björn Hallberg

A stirring tale of pirates and of emperors and who really evaded justice this morning, Saddam Hussein — or the United States and its current allies in Iraq.

Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch makes a good point, even though their recollection of pre-1991 events in Iraq is a little dodgy and clearly tainted by US doctrine.

“The test of a government’s commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders,” said Dicker. “History will judge these actions harshly.”

The US decided on a trial long before the war had even started, announced it days before Baghdad fell and then proceeded to produce evidence, train legal staff, judges. To further secure a favorable outcome they imposed US ideas onto the Iraqi code of law as well as the constitution and built a courthouse from the ground up. And filmed the trials, editing out parts they didn’t like. In all probability they even laid the rope for the execution. So naturally, in the Bizzarro world of American hegemony, this is referred to as a “fair trial.” If only they had laboured this hard to maintain and reconstruct Iraqi infrastructure.

Realizing from the beginning that this charade would look bad for the US, civil servants approached a number of nations and regional assemblies and all but the UK and Australia were smart enough to refuse to help. After all it would have made them accomplices to murder as the desired verdict was apparent from the beginning, and the process violated international law. The most obvious approach, namely to call for the ICC or some other truly global assembly to handle the case, was obviously unacceptable for a nation which may some day have to send its own presidents to be tried in the same fashion.

The Bush administration also opposes efforts to set up a permanent international war crimes court, fearing that it could wind up charging US soldiers.

“They were out to make a political, ideological point that international tribunals were not necessary to try these kinds of crimes,” said Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch International Justice Program.

In the end, the supposedly vicious butcher Hussein was found guilty of killing 143 residents of the Shiite village Al-Dujail in 1982. It is noteworthy that the trial never went as far as to examine any serious crimes. Crimes that would reveal US complicity for instance. No wonder that the concerned parties wanted a swift execution. Nor did the court weight in the complexities of ethnic and religious struggles, which contributed to the massive death toll then as they do still today. To say that Saddam alone is responsible for the death of thousands of Kurds for instance is simply baloney, and belies the fact that Kurds themselves killed more of their own than Saddam ever did and people like Barzani and Talabani took turns to enlist Hussein’s help and kiss him on the cheeks. Many of the other potential charges — the ones that were conveniently not tried in court like Halabja — were clearly exaggerated, besides obviously telling of US complicity. And it is also reasonable to assume that the court did their best not to sully the name of the former war lords that have now been elevated to revered statesmen. No one wants inconvenient truths to be exposed, and above all, the US doctrine of international, social and war theory must not be shaken. Only in the American mindset can events be eviscerated, or indeed removed from its proper context, and history be pinned on a single individual. Only in the American mindset is the world an anarchic stage where realist philosophies serve mankind entirely detached from imperialistic, geopolitical games. And only in the American mindset are wars singular, non-consecutive events.

Larry Cox, Amnesty International USA perhaps said it best as he summed up the verdict, comparing the sort of summary justice dealt to the sort of summary justice dealt by Saddam during his heyday:

The rushed execution of Saddam Hussein is simply wrong. It signifies justice denied for countless victims who endured unspeakable suffering during his regime, and now have been denied their right to see justice served.

Undeniably, summary justice is just so fashionable. Not to mention how well it suits the modern media format, where truth is spun and world events are lined up shallow, commercial fifteen second reports punctuated by incessant, uninformed jabbering.

So here’s to the new year and the hope that we will see George W Bush, the rest of the US elite past and present, their apologists, proxies and fellow travellers strung up in the near future. Proxies like the late Augusto Pinochet who despite being cut from the same cloth as Hussein, escaped any sort of justice, summary or not. Not because he was less of a monster, not because he had repented, but because the US ostensibly defended his honor. It would seem not every human rights offender or war criminal is created equal. Until the United States of America owns up to its past, and changes its ways, the world will forever doubt its intentions.

Entry 670 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 3 years, 2 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.