Saddam
Hussein Verdict:
US Politicians, Media Applaud
The Gallows And The Noose
By David Walsh
08 November 2006
World
Socialist Web
It
is, in its own way, entirely fitting that a show trial followed by a
hanging should be hailed by the US media and both major parties as symbols
of Washington’s “democratic” mission in Iraq.
Politicians, Republican and
Democratic alike, were unanimous in their celebration of the verdict.
George W. Bush called the death sentence “a milestone in the Iraqi
people’s effort to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule
of law” and “a major achievement for Iraq’s young
democracy and its constitutional government.”
This from a president who
has presided over the slaughter of more than half a million Iraqis,
who refuses to recognize any constitutional restraints on his own power,
and who has overseen the establishment of a legal framework for police-state
rule within the United States.
The leaders of the “opposition”
party in the US, the Democrats, joined with Bush in celebrating Hussein’s
sentence. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called
the court’s decision “a great verdict,” adding that
Hussein “is a war criminal and he’s getting what he deserves.”
Senator Hillary Clinton of
New York claimed that the verdict was a new chance for the Bush administration
to improve its performance in Iraq: “Now that Saddam is finally
held accountable for his misrule of that country, I hope people will
be able to move forward.” Senator Charles Schumer of New York
told “Meet the Press” that Hussein “was a brutal,
evil dictator” who is “getting the punishment that he deserves.”
The American media followed
suit. The more respectable press added layers of hypocrisy to the depravity
of its views.
The New York Times grumbled
that while in the best of all possible worlds the Hussein trial might
have been “an exemplary exercise in the rule of law,” the
actual court proceeding “fell somewhere short of that goal.”
In indicating the deficiencies, the newspaper provided a sketch of what
was, in fact, a grotesque mockery of judicial procedure: “More
seriously, powerful politicians regularly tried to influence the outcome,
judges were not allowed to rule impartially, and defense lawyers were
denied security measures and documents they need.” (“Denied
security measures” was the Times’ diplomatic allusion to
the assassination of three defense lawyers in the course of the proceedings.)
Still and all, the “newspaper
of record” had no problem swallowing the verdict and tacitly welcoming
the coming hanging as “exemplary punishment.”
The Washington Post adopted
the same cynical approach, acknowledging that the trial was not “the
model of fairness that the Bush administration and many Iraqis hoped
for,” but concluding, “There nevertheless can be little
doubt that justice was delivered.”
The Chicago Tribune claimed
that “Unlike other modern tyrants, Hussein stood trial in his
own country and was judged by his own people. That is a stirring accomplishment
for this fledgling democracy.” USA Today echoed this line: “For
all its flaws, the trial of Saddam Hussein was the first time in memory
that a nation has tried and sentenced to death a dictator who terrorized
its people. For all the messiness of the nearly three-year-long process,
that is no small thing.”
The Iraqi people had nothing
to do with the trial of Saddam Hussein. This was a kangaroo court proceeding,
illegally held under the gun-barrels of a foreign occupier, whose outcome
was entirely scripted and predetermined.
The puppet prime minister,
Nouri al-Maliki, confidently predicted last month, “This criminal
tyrant will be executed.” The US and Britain selected the judges,
who were sent to London for training; “rehearsals” were
staged in Italy and the Netherlands. Any judges who showed signs of
impartiality were dismissed. Three defense lawyers and one witness were
kidnapped and executed during this farce of a tribunal, held deep in
Baghdad’s Green Zone behind bulletproof barriers and under armed
guard.
This blatant exercise in
victors’ justice is what the American press refers to as “deficient,”
“flawed” and “messy.” Involved here is not simply
a matter of suppressing the facts, but an utter lack of concern for
or commitment to democratic principles. These people could care less
whether justice is served in Baghdad or any American courtroom.
The more extreme right-wing
press was in its element after the verdict. Rupert Murdoch’s gutter
rag, the New York Post, ran the headline “Good Noose—Saddam
Sentenced to Hang,” while its fellow tabloid, the New York Daily
News, proclaimed, “Next Stop Hell!” It is a measure of the
current state of American political life that no one at the News apparently
thought twice about the headline of a related article on the impact
of the sentence, “Death Sentence May Give the GOP New Life.”
There is something deeply
diseased about a political and media elite that publicly and shamelessly
advertises its sadism and blood lust. At no other point in modern American
history has the word “kill” been so popular with politicians,
generals and editorialists. This pervading sickness, the delight in
death and destruction, and, in the present case, in the gallows and
the noose, is not something that the replacement of one wing of this
elite by another in an election will alter.
Why are these people hailing
the Hussein verdict? First of all, their enthusiasm reveals the actual
mentality of the American ruling elite.
It expresses the vindictiveness
of those who for years viewed the Hussein regime (after the Iraqi dictator
ceased to be an American ally) as an obstacle to the unfettered sway
of the US over the region. The American ruling elite believes that its
“national interest” grants it a divine right to plunder
Middle Eastern oil reserves. No opposition will be brooked.
Unable to beat down the resistance
of the Iraqi population and achieve their aims, despite the most cruel
violence and repression, the US political and military elite are all
the more determined to take out their rage against whatever targets
fall into their hands.
More generally, the Hussein
death sentence is a politically calculated effort to remind governments
and populations around the world that America bestrides the world like
a colossus, or intends to. The image of a former national leader’s
hanging is meant to serve as an object lesson, a warning, a demonstration
of American power and what happens to those who challenge it.
Bush and his allies in the
Democratic Party and the media want to demonstrate the supposed invincibility
of American imperialism. This is a message aimed at Iranian President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, as well as the Russian, Chinese, Pakistani and, for
that matter, European elites.
It is no accident that the
Times, in approving Hussein’s “exemplary punishment,”
borrowed a phrase previously associated with the methods employed by
the Nazis.
Saddam Hussein was guilty
of many crimes, but it is not for American imperialism and its puppets
to try or sentence him. It is the province of the Iraqi working class
to mete out justice to its former oppressors.
If Hussein is responsible
for “crimes against humanity,” then what should be the charges
against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest? They have destroyed
an entire country, razing cities and causing an estimated 655,000 deaths.
They have let loose the American military on an unsuspecting population,
resulting in torture, rape and abuses beyond counting. Abu Ghraib, Fallujah,
Haditha—these names are already infamous. How many more past crimes
have yet to be exposed, how many more are still to be committed?
Between the Clinton and Bush
regimes, if the various scientific studies are correct, American imperialism
has been responsible for the deaths of more than one million Iraqis.
All in the pursuit of the country’s vast oil reserves. If Hussein
is a war criminal, what does that make the US political elite?
And the American media, which
concealed the deadly consequences of US-imposed economic sanctions in
the 1990s and the Bush administration’s motives for invading Iraq,
which promoted all the lies about “weapons of mass destruction”
and “ties to Al Qaeda,” now covers up for the brutality
and criminality of the ongoing occupation. With the New York Times in
the lead, the media has suppressed the damning Johns Hopkins University
study on Iraqi deaths. These are the self-proclaimed guardians of morals.
The US wants Saddam Hussein
dispatched as quickly as possible. They do not want him around for another
trial. In particular, Washington has no interest in seeing Hussein testify
in a case involving the events in the Kurdish region in 1988. The Iraqi
military, then engaged in a war with Iran, launched chemical attacks
on the Kurdish population, including the people of Halabja, with the
knowledge and complicity of the American government. It would be far
more convenient to hold such a trial without the presence of Hussein,
who might raise embarrassing questions. As every gangster knows, dead
men tell no tales.
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