Saddam Hussein Show Trial Begins

The Trial of Saddam Hussein, et. al, got underway earlier today in a Baghdad court room. The temptation is to treat as though it were a news event. Such a journalistic instinct, while understandable, is wrong – there is no chance for an acquittal. The event is better seen as theatre.

The Kensington Review has long maintained an aversion to show trials of this sort. While not invented by Comrade Stalin (the French did a marvelous job of such trials during the 1790s), he did more than anyone to bring them into the modern communications age. The 1930s trials of everyone who displeased him were useful politically because they served as an admonition to any seeking to vary from the dictator’s will. They reached their apogee in the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials that followed World War II. In these charades, the mockery of vengeance posing as judicial reflection achieved perfection. Sir Winston Churchill, who understood that the trials of the Nazi leadership would only provide them a platform to justify their atrocities, rightly would have preferred quiet, summary executions.

As this morning’s events in Baghdad showed, the trial(s) of the former dictator of Iraq will not pursue justice. The judge and prosecutor are there to extract vengeance. In dressing it up as a legal (as opposed to political) affair, they only denigrate the inchoate legal system of an inchoate democracy in Iraq. The ex-dictator got the best of it this morning when he refused to state his name. The judge asked at least half a dozen times for the defendant to identify himself – even saying according to the BBC translator, “Mr. Saddam, please identify yourself.” Surely there was no need for the court to have a response; the whole world knows who he is. By refusing, he only made the judge look small.

The political reason for the trial is to discredit the ancient regime in the eyes of the Iraqi people once and for all. Yet, the trial is being held under the authority of the provisional government. Had the court convened after the December 15 elections, the government trying the case would have the legitimacy of democracy behind it; currently, it has the authority of foreign troops. As the unemployed dictator said, “I preserve my constitutional rights as the president of Iraq. I do not recognize the body that has authorized you and I don't recognize this aggression. What is based on injustice is unjust ... I do not respond to this so-called court, with all due respect.” Well, apart from still claiming to be president, he does have a case regarding legitimacy.

Moreover, the trial centers on the execution of 143 people for an attempt on Saddam Hussein’s life in the town of Dujail. Nothing about this case will address the chemical attack on the Iraqi town of Halabja, the war of aggression against Iran, nor the war of aggression against Kuwait. It is like trying Hitler for the “Night of the Long Knives” rather than the Holocaust and World War II. The authorities look petty and timid.

Adjourned until November28, the farce will grow worse as the defense is likely to call witnesses like President George Bush the Elder, Defense Secretary Field Marshal Donald von Rumsfeld and Baroness Thatcher. Naturally, they won’t attend, but by refusing to testify to their own involvement with the Ba’athist regime in Iraq, they will further undermine the legitimacy and transparency of the court. And there remains the threat that he could escape – after all, Napoleon did and the result was 15,000 dead at Waterloo. Sir Winston was right – just shoot him.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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