At last, the fallen tyrant has been brought to trial to hear the first of many charges against his former regime, the first of which being massacres he ordered in 1983 that killed around 140 people. Atrocities like that, however, are quite minor in comparison to his greatest crimes: the Anfal campaign that slaughtered 5,000 Kurds and his invasion of Kuwait in 1990. When will those charges be heard?
The question that is being repeatedly brought up is whether Hussein will, or even ought to, receive a fair trial. I certainly hope not, unless we are willing to call former friends like Donald Rumsfeld, the first George Bush and Dick Cheney to the stand, as has been noted for what such a trial would logically "entail".
Some good information can be found at Case Western Reserve University's School of Law page covering several of the issues concerning the ongoing trial, billed as the next "Grotian Moment" that will set new norms for international politics as did the trials at Nuremberg. More on this story later as I make sense of it all, time permitting.
For now, I say this: No doubt that Hussein is a monster. So why in God's name did we ever support such a man?
No comments:
Post a Comment