http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/adrian_hamilton/article21081
73.ece
Independent.co.uk
Comment
Adrian Hamilton: The meaningless execution of a tyrant
Saddam's hanging, when it comes, will produce neither universal relief nor
outrage
Published: 28 December 2006
There won't be many people who mourn Saddam Hussein's imminent death - if
he
hasn't been executed already - any more than there were many who mourned
the
death of Slobodan Milosevic this year. They were both tyrants of the
worst sort,
ruling by fear and the word of the informant. Both were responsible for
war on
their neighbours as well as oppression of their own people.
The Serbian dictator managed at least to cheat the judge of the
international
court in The Hague by passing away from natural courses. Saddam Hussein
hasn't
managed that. But, like Milosevic, he has been able to turn what was
meant to be
a grand cathartic ceremony of closure and reconciliation into a desultory
almost
meaningless damp squib of a trial. His hanging, when it comes, discreetly
and
without ceremony, will produce neither a sense of universal relief nor
outrage.
It will simply happen, to be announced after the event, an event out of
time and
even place.
The occupying powers were always wrong, of course, to see the capture and
trial
of Saddam Hussein and his closest creatures as some kind of replay of the
Nuremberg and Tokyo trials, just as the international community was wrong
to see
Milosevic's extradition to the international court in The Hague as some
huge
triumph of global justice.
It's an historical misreading for a start. Nuremberg was always victor's
judgment dressed up as judicial decency. It was right that the accused
were made
to face the consequences of their actions. No one should doubt that. And
Nuremberg at least had the pragmatic benefit of drawing a line under the
number
of Nazis to be punished for their misdeeds so the work of reconstruction
could
go on.
But the trials never really acted as a process of truth and
reconciliation in
the manner that South Africa has sought. Effectively they allowed the
Germans to
get on with the next phases with the feeling, however unsubstantiated,
that
Nazism was now over and done with. If the object of the Milosevic trial
was to
make the Serbs come to terms with their recent history, then it should
never
have been held outside the country. The fact that the international
community -
the victors of the Nato bombings and the intervention in Kosovo - felt it
better
to hold it abroad was as much an indication of their nervousness at
Serbian
popular feeling as an enthusiasm for international justice.
And so it has proved. There has been no purging of the past in the former
Yugoslavia, or any of its parts. Perhaps there can't be unless the
justice is
summary and unjust in the manner of the Romanians who simply shot Nicolai
Ceaucescu and his wife in 1989, much in the manner of the Italian
partisans who
shot Mussolini and his mistress and then hung their bodies upside down in
Milan,
leaving the parish priest to climb a ladder and tie down Clara Petrucci's
dress,
to preserve some modesty.
Certainly Winston Churchill seems to have thought that it would be
better,
should Adolf Hitler have been caught alive, to execute him summarily,
preferably
by electrocution. And he may well have been right. Victor's justice is
better
seen as just that, an act of immediate punishment so that society can
proceed
ahead regardless.
Had the US troops done the same with Saddam Hussein, and shot him on
sight, or
in keeping with the man, thrown him to the relatives of his victims to do
their
worst, it would not only have saved the hangman his task, it would also
have
avoided the whole drawn-out charade of a trial that was neither fair nor
purgative.
They didn't because they didn't want Saddam to become a martyr of the
Baathist
cause and because they wanted his trial to act as means to destroy the
old order
and welcome in a new one. Both ideas reflected a total misunderstanding
of the
Iraqi dictator's personal position and power. Saddam Hussein was never
personally popular, any more than Milosevic. He had made too many
enemies,
taken a life from too many families and tribes, for that. If he still has
any
resonance in the country, it is only because the insurgency has grown to
a
point when any nationalist symbol will be used to help their cause.
Saddam Hussein held power because he had the security apparatus to do so,
because the West and the Arab world preferred him there to the anarchy
they
feared would follow his demise, and because the UN sanctions debilitated
his
nation and increased his direct power through his control over the
oil-for-food
regime. When he fell the regime fell because there was nothing very much
left
behind it. But equally there was nothing to replace it because a decade
of
sanctions and three decades of his rule had hollowed out the structure of
political society.
The idea that Saddam's fall would be a great act of decapitation, the
step that
would automatically lead to a better society and a more cohesive country
was
always fanciful. Almost all the experts knew this and said so, on the few
occasions that they were allowed to, so why did not the occupants of the
White
House and No 10?
The answer is that President Bush and Tony Blair chose to take Saddam
Hussein at
his own evaluation. As a symbol of militaristic Iraq, he could be
demonised and
his fall greeted as an historic achievement for the force of Western
arms. The
point was not primarily to help the Iraqis but to make a demonstration
that
would change the face of the Middle East.
The fall of the regime, the trial of a tyrant, the imposition of a new
order
were all part of a vision that was never grounded in the facts of Iraq,
because
the facts on the ground were secondary to the purpose. Had it been
otherwise,
there would have been a proper post-invasion plan.
Instead we have the results of the latest opinion polls, so beloved of
those who
cheered on the invasion. According to a survey by the Iraq Centre for
Research
and Strategic Studies in November, 89.9 per cent of respondents felt that
Iraq
was worse today than when Saddam Hussein was in power. Just over 50 per
cent
wanted the multinational forces to leave immediately, with a further 20
per
cent declaring that they wanted them to start to leave now on a set
timetable.
To those who still claim that the invasion was right, because it removed
a
tyrant, one has this simple question: "Did we do it to make ourselves
feel
better or to make things better for the Iraqis?" For, if we ever thought
they
were one and the same thing, then we have been cruelly deceiving
ourselves and
even more cruelly deceiving them.
a.hamilton@ independent.co.uk
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
Serbian News Network - SNN
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