Saddam Hussein to be hanged
As expected, today Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death. The head of a regime based on terror certainly deserved a harsh punishment for his acts. The defense argument that Saddam did not order the slaughter of Kurds as a Shiites after they tried to free themselves from his ruthless rule is simply childish and unsustainable.
However, it is also true that this trial was a mockery of justice, organized by the Bush Administration and their Iraqi puppet government to justify the American intervention after other arguments presented to the American people, such as the WMD, have proven to be false. The timing of the sentence is by itself very suspicious, just a couple of days before an important U.S. election which is expected to condemn Bush over its own actions.
The truth is that we are all responsible for what is happening in Iraq today. We all knew that Saddam was a threat to his own people as well as neighbors and we never did anything to stop him until the 9/11 attack. A couple of years later, many believe that Americans should have listened to the French and not invade Iraq to avoid the countless victims that have resulted from the invasion, but that logic is also flawed because it would have left a ruthless dictator in power, even though that would probably have resulted in a much lesser evil. Of course, the foreign and local islamic extremists are also largely responsible for the suffering of Iraqis who are being slaughtered, in a war that is, in general, not theirs.
Many believe that the only way to quickly reduce the violence is to divide the country in three (this is not very easy as there are important minority enclaves). However, this is unlikely to happen since the U.S. and Europe are concerned that an oil rich Shiite South could ally, or even merge with Iran which has generated lots of justified concerns with its nuclear ambitions. They are also concerned about an oil rich Kurd country that could in the future represent a threat to Turkey which rules over a Kurd minority that has always aspired to independence. Therefore, we are trying to maintain the integrity of a country by force, much in the same way Saddam did it, even though, we can obviously not compare the U.S. forces, which try to respect human rights, to the military forces from the Baath regime.
The fact is that in Irak there is no white and black. All the players are grey, defending primarily their own interests with no real concern for the Iraqi people. While I am personally against the death penalty, which should not come as a surprise being European, the truth is that defending him is hardly one of my priorities. I am much more concerned about what we call justice. There are countless players that have shaped the current situation in Iraq and most will never get to be judged. Even worse, they will claim that they did what they did in order to help the Iraqis. Today we should all examine our conscience and see if some of our acts (supporting Bush, Blair or Aznar, turning a blind eye to the situation or simply ignoring it) have helped shape the current situation. I really believe that this exercise will help us see the gray in us.
Today, more violence is expected. More innocent Iraqis will die. For them and their families, knowing Saddam’s fate is probably totally irrelevant.