[BRIEF NOTE] Trials in Iraq
Dec. 17th, 2003 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldGlenn Reynolds wrote that "I think that the UN, and the human rights community, are guilty of neocolonialism" in opposing an Iraqi trial of Saddam Hussein. This is undermined, of course, by his willing refusal to see neocolonialism at work anywhere where the French aren't involved.
Tacitus is wrong. Iraqi civil society isn't in nearly enough good shape to support a trial of Saddam Hussein--Israel tried Eichmann, but Israel was also a democratic society with the rule of law and two decades of practice with both (even if both were admittedly imperfect). Iraq has practice with neither.
Besides, many of Saddam's most obvious crimes--launching missiles at Israel and Iran, using poison gas, conquering Kuwait--were directed against people living outside of Iraq. Hence, the need for an authentically international trial.
Saddam's evil, but justice must be meted out impartially. It would hardly help the American/Iraqi cause to have the trial be portrayed with any degree of plausibility as a show trial, pure and simple.
Tacitus is wrong. Iraqi civil society isn't in nearly enough good shape to support a trial of Saddam Hussein--Israel tried Eichmann, but Israel was also a democratic society with the rule of law and two decades of practice with both (even if both were admittedly imperfect). Iraq has practice with neither.
Besides, many of Saddam's most obvious crimes--launching missiles at Israel and Iran, using poison gas, conquering Kuwait--were directed against people living outside of Iraq. Hence, the need for an authentically international trial.
Saddam's evil, but justice must be meted out impartially. It would hardly help the American/Iraqi cause to have the trial be portrayed with any degree of plausibility as a show trial, pure and simple.
