Saddam-Like Fools

I've followed the trial of Saddam Hussein since America had the foresight to invade Iraq on my birthday, 2003. I heard on the radio yesterday that he had been found guilty and sentenced to death.

Now, I want to preface my comments with my honest belief that Saddam Hussein is by no definition a "good person." However, what we're doing to him now is beyond belief.

I rememember President Bush discussing his reasons for invading Iraq, and telling America that Iraq deserved the same standards of fairness and democracy we have here. It's ironic that in the spectacle we made of bringing democracy to the Middle East, we put on a "trial" that would have been unconstitutional in every sense of the word here in our "model democracy."

First off, what Saddam did technically wasn't illegal. Sure, everyone finds killing morally repugnant and I'm not trying to ally myself with Stalin, Milosevic, and Hitler. However, Saddam ran a sovereign nation and under his laws, had a technical right to do what he did. We never warned him to stop, and no international body went to the trouble of sanctioning him in public. Essentially, Saddam was tried under an ex post facto law because we needed an excuse to get rid of him after the fall of Iraq. If this is the case, we ought to be able to form a tribunal and try Bush for authorizing torture, secret detentions, and political assassinations. But that won't happen, because we're the biggest kid on the block.

Second, every procedural safeguard we have in our "democracy" apparently wasn't necessary in Iraq. Saddam had no jury of his peers, could not confront or cross examine witnesses directly, and was faced with all kinds of admissible hearsay. Not to mention that the panel of judges was appointed by the government that had just replaced Saddam, in consultation with the Bush administration. It appears that Saddam will be executed within thirty days of the appellate approval under the "Iraqi Democracy."

I think that killing under any circumstance is wrong. Saddam was wrong to commit genocide, and we are wrong to judge him with a sentence of death. However, the worst affront to justice in this case was the show trial that "immunized" all of the people looking for a legitimate reason to kill this man. Show justice is worse than acting first and then trying to explain your actions afterwards because it legitmizes something that was wrong to begin with. I am sickened that people can applaud this miscarriage of justice and pretend that the public spectacle of Saddam's trial helps us wash our hands of any wrongdoing. Shame on all of us for this blatant and disgusting hypocricy. They're all a bunch of Saddam-like fools.