1. Sunnis: "We will avenge you Saddam." Shiites: "Execute Saddam." Remember, this is a country already in civil war. For the sake of an October Surprise - occurring a couple days in November before the US elections, further tribal and sectarian violence in Iraq is given a whole new purpose and force. Everybody on the planet knows this, except perhaps for a handful of Republicans and some oblivious independents.
2. "Crimes against Iraqis." Ouch. Many real experts on Iraq and Iraqis themselves have been saying for some time that Iraq was better off under Saddam than it is now under the occupation, despite Saddam's abuses of his people. Furthermore, if we take "crimes against Iraqis" seriously and consistently, that would bode ill for the American occupiers who have, after all, killed some 600,000 people and tortured and raped countless others. The US administration that prompted the war did so for false reasons, which have now, finally, turned towards the real concern of maintaining the oil supply. Which is a worse crime - controlling against one's political enemies or invading and occupying a country for its resources where, in both cases, people are killed at excessive rates. What counts as a crime against Iraqis?
"The hanging of Saddam Hussein will turn to hell for the Americans," said Vitaya Wisethrat, a respected Muslim cleric in Thailand, where a bloody Islamic insurgency is raging in the country's south.3. This is a political verdict in its timing, however. Will the day come when there is a political verdict against the US occupiers? There is already, de facto, as seen from the violence in the streets. What about the de jure? Will this eventually mean The Hague?
4. The trial itself was bogus and a poor example for a "democratic Iraq."
"The independence and impartiality of the court was impugned. There was political interference. The first judge resigned, the second was barred for being a former member of the Baath party, the only political entity at the time, and the third judge had relatives who were killed in Halabje [where Kurds were gassed by Saddam Hussein's forces].5. Why hanging? Why not the antiseptic, anesthetic, concealed method of execution of the Americans - death by injection? Because hanging is public, visible. Read your Foucault. The US is a liberal-democratic state. Death by injection is still execution, but carried out to pose the fewest psychological and moral problems for liberal-democratic society's disposal of its criminal ills. Iraq is illiberal. Hanging - and we will see the photos - is not only the execution of a criminal, but a public display intended to strike fear in the hearts of the people. The US has attempted this before in Iraq psy-ops methods (such as showing clearly tortured victims on Iraqi television admitting their guilt as "terrorists" - very Stalinist). It is both execution of an individual and submission of a population.
"The security of the court was also impossible to keep. Three defence lawyers were murdered. Saddam himself had no access to legal advice for a year. There were also problems with the defence's ability to function."
6. More: Juan Cole op/ed on the situation, especially regarding partition.
More memory hole from A Tiny Revolution.
While the neocons are fleeing the war.
2 comments:
If the U.S. protected people we call "the government of Iraq" hang Saddam Hussein, it will be their first and last exercise of real power. It's neither an Iraqi choice nor a decision of the world through the Hague court, nor even apparently certified by the United Nations, who quit years back. It's going to be a U.S. engineered spectacle.
Hi,
in my opinion, in this case too, the human rights, should be attend.
Greetings from Germany
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