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Justice in Iraq won't come with a noose
By Zöe Williams
williamz@mscd.edu

On the first day of Eid-Al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of Sacrifice, Saddam Hussein was hanged for his role in the 1982 Dujail massacre that killed 148 Iraqis. Photographs and video splashed every news station with images of the black-clad Hussein led to the gallows by men in masks.

As a longtime anti-death penalty activist and an opponent of the Iraq war since its inception, it was a somber day. It is three and a half years into an unending war, 3,000 troops, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and unknown hundreds of Iraqi combatants later, and the public is to look at the event as a “milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy,” as President Bush said.

It doesn’t make sense. The entire situation in Iraq has never made sense. We can look back and count every time Bush told us to “stay the course,” scrutinize the doomsday weapons-of-mass-destruction speeches and keep tallies of the dead, but you cannot make sense of a catastrophe. We can believe that killing Hussein is bringing Iraq closer to democracy, or we can start to push for coherence.

I choose the latter because I like my politics the way I like my cake batter: consistent. After a stroll through the news headlines of the past four years, I can tell you that there isn’t one thing Saddam has done that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and their brigade of lackeys has not. After all, Donnie Rumsfeld shook hands with Hussein one year after he committed the crime that got him hanged.

Hussein was tried for the massacre at Dujail. I am not a big fan of judges and contemporary judicial process, but if we are aiming for consistency, set some dates for the massacres of Fallujah, Basra, Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and dozens of other Iraqi cities. As a friend of mine says, while Saddam’s cage is still warm, let’s pack the next round of brutal leaders in!

In all seriousness, a war crimes tribunal is the best opportunity we have to see our homegrown humans of mass destruction and war profiteers held accountable for the crimes of their rule. The Democrats surely won’t impeach them. Unless a revolution sparks up before 2008, the Bush administration facing the jury is the only chance for the people of the world to rest assured that, even in these times, justice can be served.