Saddam

Saddam Hussein is dead. OK, so what did that do?

Not a goddamn thing, except to hurt the standing of the new Iraqi government and make me even more angry with our own government's handling of postwar Iraq. Think about this: trying somebody like Saddam Hussein for war crimes should be the easiest thing in the world. It's clear that he's a criminal, guilty as hell of a variety of horrible crimes. The US, after capturing him, should have turned him over to the International Criminal Court and let him face justice. But the consensus was that the new Iraqi government should get to try Saddam, for closure or something. OK, fine. All the new government had to do was give him a fair, transparent trial, and show what a horrible person he was.

They couldn't do it. Saddam's trial was apparently plagued by inconsistencies, unfair judges, and a total lack of transparency. On CNN yesterday afternoon, Saddam's own lawyer didn't even know his whereabouts a few hours before he was executed. The whole thing stinks to high hell; it was a total travesty.

I am not sorry that Saddam Hussein is dead. But I am sorry that I feel like he got an unfair shake - that actually pisses me off. I blame the Iraqi government, but even more I blame the US government, which was so insistent that Saddam be tried in Iraq instead of in the proper location, The Hague. That is the reason that Saddam's last months on Earth should be seen as a terrible miscarriage of justice instead of the just punishing of one of the major war criminals of the 20^th century.

Another note: while I'm not sorry that Saddam is dead, I am sorry that America put so much pressure on Iraq to get him tried and, more importantly, executed. The country lowered itself to Saddam's level (where, incidentally, it spent most of the latter half of the 1900s) this week, and I'm ashamed of my country because of it.

UPDATE: I knew Bush's response would annoy me, and he didn't disappoint.

Fair trials were unimaginable under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule," the president said. "It is a testament to the Iraqi people's resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial. This would not have been possible without the Iraqi people's determination to create a society governed by the rule of law."

The White House said Bush was asleep at the time of the execution but was briefed by national security adviser Stephen Hadley before going to bed.

It doesn't surprise me that Bush thinks justice was done, and nor does it surprise me that he slept soundly instead of staying awake to hear the news of the result of his policy. Bush has the kind of persona, staggeringly inappropriate for the President of the United States, that doesn't encourage serious reflection on one's decisions. Justice was done, and the trial was fair, because it was what Bush wanted to happen.

The details, for him, are immaterial.