The Trial of Saddam; a savage hypocrisy.

Great Debates
1

I know, I know, we’ve had dozens of threads about the impending Saddam trial, and I’m sure there were be more to come, but I feel this one is slightly different.

Saddam is being charged with “crimes against humanity” most notably for his treatment of the Kurds and for invading Kuwait. My problem with this is that those HAPPENED 13 YEARS AGO.

If what Saddam did was wrong, why are we waiting until now?

Let’s assume that he is guilty: Had the US not invaded Iraq, Saddam would still be in power having committed “crimes against humanity.” When would he have ever been brought to justice?

Is the UN so powerless that it allows war criminals to go about their daily lives, running their country into the ground, free to continue?

Why did we have to wait 13 years to bring this to trial? And how many other war criminals are currently running a country, but deserve to be in jail? Is there anything we can do about it?

2

It seems to me on this board that you’re going to get a few responses. First, yes, the UN is weak. However, those people who say that the US was justified for attacking Iraq to remove this evil dictator are called Machiavellian, because we never found WMD. On the flip side, attacking just to remove a dictator is viewed as meddling. If you use other countries as models (Somalia, N. Korea, Libya, China), then yes, the UN has the ability to prevent crimes and doesn’t. Are we free to decide what to do, I don’t know.

3

Do we really need to go thru this again?

Yes, the UN is weak. Most nations want it that way so it won’t meddle in internal affairs too often.

And certainly you recognize the fallacy of arguing that you can’t prosecute **any ** criminals unless you prosecute **all ** criminals, don’t you?

4

There seems to be a rush to call lots of things hypocrisy (in this case “savage hypocrisy”) that are nothing of the sort. It is a perfectly defensible position to argue that Saddam has committed crimes against humanity but that it does not follow that we (as the UN or world community) should necessarily invade Iraq to bring him to justice because, for example,

(1) Such an invasion would likely cause more problems than it would solve.

(2) Saddam had been largely contained from committing further such abuses, e.g., by the Gulf War actions and the subsequent no-fly zones that protected the Kurds.

etc., etc.

In other words, it does not follow from the fact that a crime against humanity has likely been committed that the perpetrator must be brought to justice even if doing so entails considerable costs and risks and if, while not doing so, we feel that we can still at least limit his ability to commit further such crimes.

However, if subsequent events (the U.S. invasion) lead to his capture, it does make sense to then try him for these crimes. While one can argue about whether these courses of action are correct in this particular case, I don’t see where there is necessarily any hypocrisy, let alone “savage hypocrisy”.

What is much closer to hypocrisy is when one uses such crimes against humanity as one justification (or, if you will, “pretext”) for invading Iraq when some of these same people in the past (e.g., Rumsfeld) seemed to show little or no concern that such crimes had been committed and were, in fact, quite buddy-buddy with Saddam even after some of these crimes had occurred. [I suppose this can be justified to a certain extent by some “real politik” type of arguments, but they do tend to get a bit dicey.]

5

A better discussion would be a judicial one: whether the new leadership of a country should be given the reponsibility of carrying out trials against those who lost the war, ie. their former enemies. AFAIK, that has only happened to low-level officials in previous post-war trials of international interest.

Unfortunately, the ICC provisions states that an international trial (or tribunal) is only an option if the “home country” is unable to carry out such trials or opposes to do so.

6

I don’t get it. The world was unable or unwilling to go after Saddam until now, so trying him now is a “savage hypocrisy?” In what way? Are you suggesting a statute of limitations on crimes against humanity? Ira Einhorn beat his girlfriend to death, avioded prosecution for two decades, and basically sat in France alternating between laughing his ass off and living the good life becuase France refused to extradite him. Should he be given a pass because we couldn’t get to him for over twenty years?

7

I dunno. Wouldn’t the Eichmann trial fit that description?

8

“Savage Hypocrisy”? Huh?

This is completely incoherent. The fact is, the UN was specifically set up to ignore such things. It is not a club of legitimate democracies, rather it is a talking shop where the people who control countries–for whatever reason, by whatever means–are able to meet and negotiate.

Otherwise, the Soviet Union would never have joined when the UN was set up after WWII. The founders of the UN knew that the Soviet Union was a totalitarian dictatorship, they knew that the governments of eastern europe were Stalin’s puppets, they knew that the various third world tinpot dictators violated human rights on a regular basis with impunity.

And so the UN was not set up to foster democracy or human rights. It was set up to try to avoid WWIII, by giving the great powers a forum to work out their differences semi-peacefully. Which means that each state, no matter how illegitimate, was treated as equal. Each state was deemed to have the right to secure borders, and to handle their internal affairs however they liked, because otherwise the dictatorships would simply withdraw, and the UN would be useless.

And also note that Saddam is not being tried by the UN, or the United States. He is being tried in Iraq, by Iraqis, for crimes against Iraqis. Surely you cannot claim that Saddam was innocent of everything. The man ordered murders, rapes, torture, genocide. It would be difficult to find a crime the man DIDN’T commit, for crying out loud. Why is it hypocritical for the Iraqis to try such a fucking degenerate, now that he is out of power? Does being a dictator give you blanket immunity for your actions?

As a practical matter, dictators cannot be held responsible for their crimes while their regimes are still in existance. Surely we can agree on that, right? So their regimes must be overthrown first, right? And they can be overthrown by internal revolutions, or by external invasions. The fact that we aren’t invading every dictatorship in the world, destroying their regimes, and hauling off the dictators in chains is irrelevant to the fact that Saddam Hussein really did murder, torture, brutalize and enslave the people of Iraq, not to mention the people of Iran and Kuwait.

We would be perfectly happy to arrest Kim Jong Il and try him for his crimes, except to do that we’d have to invade North Korea, which isn’t exactly a weekend lark. It is simply incoherent to contend that we cannot hold Saddam Hussein accountable for his murders, because other murderers are even now getting away with their crimes. That is equivalent to contending that we can’t prosecute the Washington snipers because OJ got away with his killings. Ridiculous.

If you think we should invade North Korea, or Sudan, or Zimbabwe, or Algeria, or Vietnam, or Pakistan, or any other third world shithole dictatorship, because there are crimes against humanity going on there, feel free to call for those invasions and make the case for them. But we are stretched a little thin right now in Iraq, perhaps it would be prudent to wait until we can pull most of our troops out of Iraq before we contemplate another invasion.

Where’s the hypocrisy? This makes no sense.

9

I was unaware there was a statue of limitations on crimes against humanity, and the US had to act before this statue went into effect. Thanks for the information.

I don’t know. Perhaps you have an opinion on this and would like to tell us what it is.

Perhaps it is. Perhaps the US is as well, since it could have toppled Saddam in 1991 as as part of a legitimate coalition, and has stood by idly for close to 50 years while great numbers of the people of North Korea starve to death at the hand of a despotic leadership. Perhaps Great Britain is, since it resolutely refuses to invade Zimbabwe and topple Mugabe.

It might help your case if you could show that the UN asked the United States to invade Iraq on its behalf, and did so due to its powerlessness in this regard.

a) You already believe you know why this is so: that if the US had not acted, Saddam would never have been brought to trial for his actions. You are not asking a real question.

b) I’m sure you have a few in mind, so please, don’t be coy; air 'em out. Me, I’m tempted to mention the leader of a certain North American country, but that would be too easy. There are, of course, others.

c) Sure; for example, the US could invade, and install a puppet government in, every country whose leaders it arbitrarily deems ‘war criminals’, and probably bankrupt its treasury while doing so.

10

Part of the problem was that the UN was set up to do both. The UN Charter sets up to both:

and

and the UN Declaration of Rights, saying everyone around the world had the right to representative government and freedom from oppression was passed as early as 1948.

At the same time, the Soviet Union was a permanent Security Council member, and dictatorships were members of the UN. This has, I think, set up a fundimental dichotomy that still helps to immobilize the UN.

11

No. By post-war I mean a trial immediatey following the end of a war, not a trial conducted more than a decade later.

I’m not advocating that Saddam should be tried abroad, quite the opposite. But I do believe a tribunal consisting of both internationally recognized judges and iraqi judges would be better, and I believe that he should be tried for crimes against humanity as it relates to international law. This trial is far to important for the future of the middle east to leave even a shred of doubt about the legitimacy of the proceedings.

12

In my view, Saddam’s trial won’t be legitimate unless it is conducted under a democratically elected government of Iraq and not under the puppet government running things for now.

Saddam would also have to have full access to counsel, exculpatory evidence, and the right to question the witnesses against him in open court.

13

So, should all Iraqi detainees be simply kept in jail w/o trial until after January?

14

And what leads yout to believe that Saddam won’t have such things?

So no trial can be legitimate except under a democratically elected government? So if I visited, say, Saudi Arabia, and killed a bunch of people there, you’d advocate freeing me?

15

Splendid idea! Escort him to the courthouse door, shove him out into the street, and let him take his chances!

16

Exculpatory evidence? What’s that? He killed those Kurds but not those Kurds?

This case is so airtight that Johnnie Cochran himself could pull out the Chewbacca defense for Saddam and he’d still lose.

17

And that was me. As usual. Robin and I are living, breathing examples of why post counts don’t matter, because I think half of all our posts are apologies like this one. :rolleyes:

18

No. But considering that Saddam Hussein was the former Head of State of Iraq, this is an exceptional case.

If we want to avoid any apperance of a sham political trial, we’ll have to either take it to an international tribunal or wait until the people of Iraq have been given a legitimate voice in their government. I don’t care how incontrovertably guilty he may be, if he’s going to be railroaded into execution, let it be by the people of Iraq instead of by the puppet government of Iraq.

19

Blalron, why can’t you let the Iraqis decide when to charge and try the motherfucker? The fact that the US is still occupying the country is irrelevant. Once again, the US isn’t charging the motherfucker with anything, he’s being charged in an Iraqi court, with international assistance. And no, in this case “international” isn’t just a euphemism for the US.

And anyway, by the time the trial really gets rolling, they’ll have probably already held elections. Is that enough for you? Or maybe we should hand him over to the Shari’a courts right now?

I really don’t get this insistence on the forms of justice, when justice is clearly being done. What makes you think Saddam will be railroaded? Since you can’t be the dictator of a third-world shithole without having people murdered and tortured all the time, it is incontrovertable that he is guilty. He’ll get his day in court, he’ll have legal representation, he’ll have time to prepare his case. And he’ll be convicted. Or maybe since we know he is guilty we should just let him go, since because he’s guilty he can’t get a fair trial?

20

You may think that a manifestly guilty person convicted through unfair means leads to a just result, but I disagree. Without proper due process, it is unjust regardless of the guilt of the defendent.

If all the judges are appointed by the United States or by the U.S installed puppet government, the trial is unfair on its face. And even if during this trial you show videos of Saddam Hussein killing people with his own hands and speaking clearly into the camera “I, Saddam Hussein am knowingly murdering people in full violating of all national and international laws against murder” it STILL wouldn’t be a fair trial because the trial is still a sham.