The trial of Saddam Hussein

Today, Saddam Hussein was brought before a Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin, a relatively unknown Kurdish jurist, and charged with crimes against humanity. Saddam pleaded not guilty.

Trials of this sort are more political than legal. They are meant to have an effect on society — the ritual and majesty of the law is used as a form of social engineering.

The most famous examples of this were the Nuremberg Trials that were held at the end of World War II. The purpose of the Nuremberg Trials was to affect both German and American societies. In Germany, the Allies wanted to create a paper trail and official record of the atrocities committed by the Nazis. The Allies also hoped that a trial, especially one where defendants were allowed to take the stand and present evidence, might help to reawaken the rule of law in German society.

But the trial was also important for America as well. Even after World War II, many Americans remained isolationist and had doubts as to whether the American commitment to the war had been worth it. The Allies accurately predicted that showcasing the trial to domestic audiences would make a strong case that American intervention had been important.

And so, people remember Nuremberg as a fairly successful experiment in dealing with tyrants and dictators. Unfortunately, the trial against Saddam will leave a much bleaker precedent for legal history.

Unlike post-war Germany, Saddam is being tried in an environment where a bloody civil war is still being waged. Sunni Iraqis, a minority of the population (perhaps 20 percent) have felt alienated by the new Iraqi government which is dominated by Kurds and Shias. The vast majority of the rebels are in fact Sunni Iraqis who are trying to upset the new political order and force an American withdrawal.

There is great potential for Saddam — who is himself a Sunni — to become a de facto leader of the insurgency. The trial is being televised, and Saddam’s defiance to the court (when asked for his name by Judge Amin, Saddam replied, “You know me. You are an Iraqi and you know who I am. And you know I don’t get tired.”) will likely resonate with Sunnis and inflame ethnic divisions. Saddam’s speeches have to date not been sectionalist (in fact it seems he has made pains to declare himself leader of all Iraqis, and not just Sunni Iraqis), but if he gets wind of the insurgency this may dramatically change. In any event, his proclamations against the American occupation and the new government might prove powerful.

Additionally, the history between the United States and Iraq is much different than the history between the United States and Germany. Roosevelt, after all, did not install Hitler as dictator and support his aggression against other countries. But it was the United States that supported Saddam, giving him nearly $40 billion to fight the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq War. Donald Rumsfeld was even sent personally by Ronald Reagan to meet with Saddam in 1983. And later, during the 1990s, it was the United States that imposed a crippling embargo on the Iraqi people, which contributed to the deaths of somewhere between 500,000 and 1.2 million Iraqis, mostly children.

If a trial is supposed to act as a mechanism of truth-telling, then any trial that failed to detail American involvement with Saddam’s regime would be sorely incomplete. Yet it is very unlikely that this relationship will be discussed in any detail.

Finally, I don’t think Saddam’s trial will be showcased by the Bush Administration to the American public in the same way that Nuremberg was. Iraq is a disaster, and if the trial of Saddam is brought to the attention of the American public, people might begin to wonder why it is that troops are still dying and money is still being spent. With Bush’s approval rating at 37% (just 32% on Iraq) he probably wants less attention directed to the moral and political debacle that is taking place everyday in that region.

Why, then, is a trial being held at all? There doesn’t seem to be any good reason. Perhaps the Bush Administration believes that a trial might somehow blow the air from Sunni insurgents, but as I mentioned above, the opposite seems more likely. Perhaps they just don’t know what to do with Saddam. If the trial gets started, and Saddam does in fact become more of a threat, then I expect a quick verdict and a hanging from the gallows by early next year.

There is, of course, one more political trial that needs to be held — a war crimes trial against George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, and whoever else was responsible for starting a war of aggression against Iraq. The Iraq conflict is an open wound, producing violent eruptions of hatred and anger that infect the entire human community. As long as this war keeps going on, there is little hope for peace anywhere on the planet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 19th, 2005 at 6:28 pm and is filed under Fear and Tyranny, Government Accountability, International Relations, The Middle East. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.