quote:Unfortunately, much of the information regarding "what else he did" has now gone to the grave with him.
My understanding is that Saddam wasn't being cooperative at all with the trial. Why do you think we would have cooperated in the future? Or is there a third option I'm missing?
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I'd like to mention the irony of Saddam's execution occuring at the same time as the mourning of a president who's most famous presidential act was likely his decision to pardon Richard Nixon. That pardon, though it angered many at the time because it seemed to rob them of a thirst for what seemed like "justice", has since become recognize as a wise act that helped heal the nation.
It was unfortunately inevitable that in Saddam's case the thirst for what felt like "justice" was too strong to escape. Not surprisingly, it is becoming apparent that the execution will not heal the country - instead it has driven the Shiites and Sunnis further apart.
Advocates of the death penalty often say it is necessary for justice. But I think "justice" is often confused with "revenge". Justice makes things right again, which killing a person cannot do. Revenge offers a temporary satisfaction to victims, but as with Saddam, it ultimately just creates further sadness and further anger.
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quote:Unfortunately, much of the information regarding "what else he did" has now gone to the grave with him.
My understanding is that Saddam wasn't being cooperative at all with the trial. Why do you think we would have cooperated in the future? Or is there a third option I'm missing?
If he's dead, the probability of new information coming from him is zero. If he's alive, it's non-zero. At the very least all of the allegations would have been aired and he would have had an opportunity to address them.
Of course, by the time all of that could happen, he might well have been dead -- as was roughly the case with Augusto Pinochet, for example -- but I think that would have been a better outcome for Iraq.
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quote: Justice makes things right again, which killing a person cannot do.
What if someone has a different definition of Justice than you do? What if Justice is the rule of law, not making things right again?
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quote:If he's dead, the probability of new information coming from him is zero. If he's alive, it's non-zero.
If you count getting false information from him as negative on the same scale (I'm not sure that would be justified, but it might be), we very well might get get "more" information out of dead Saddam than we would have out of a live one.
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False information is still information -- just information of questionable utility.
I think he was executed simply because the Iraqi government wanted him executed and knew they probably needed to do it soon or miss their chance.
quote:Originally posted by Phanto: What if someone has a different definition of Justice than you do? What if Justice is the rule of law, not making things right again?
By that metric, the "Justness" of this trial was questionable at the very least, as has already been mentioned in this thread.
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quote:What if someone has a different definition of Justice than you do? What if Justice is the rule of law, not making things right again?
Then I think they'd be mistaken. For one thing, if justice was simply the rule of law, wouldn't that mean there could never be an unjust law? I think there have been times in the past where it was just to disobey the law, or where there have been unjust laws.
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Twinky, can't we discount the possibility of reliable, truthful information coming from Saddam Hussein as so very low it is, for practical matters, effectively zero?
I mean, I'm there with you on the "try him for more crimes" part (I don't agree, but I understand that idea and it does make sense), but forestalling the execution because he might help later? That seems very unlikely, to put it politely.
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quote:If you want the "what else they did" out in public view, then publish it for public consumption.
Unfortunately, much of the information regarding "what else he did" has now gone to the grave with him.
Which is probably why the leadership was so anxious to execute him. I very much doubt that eg Muqtada al-Sadr retained his power through the Saddam era without giving a GREAT deal of cooperation to Saddam's regime. In the case of Muqtada, I'd bet he also eliminated rivals and other inconvenient people by turning them over to Saddam's internal security; including through providing totally false charges.
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"...can't we discount the possibility of reliable, truthful information coming from Saddam Hussein as so very low it is, for practical matters, effectively zero?"
Even a liar reveals truthful information -- or where&how to obtain truthful information -- by the lies s/he tells.
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quote:In general, I think that false information is worse than no information at all.
I don't think this holds in the specific case of an adversarial trial, but of course IANAL.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Twinky, can't we discount the possibility of reliable, truthful information coming from Saddam Hussein as so very low it is, for practical matters, effectively zero?
I don't think we can, no. Perhaps if his rapid execution hadn't essentially been a foregone conclusion, he might have been more cooperative. I doubt it, but I won't discount the possibility. Further, the trial process, conducted well, might well have brought to light additional information from sources other than him.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I mean, I'm there with you on the "try him for more crimes" part (I don't agree, but I understand that idea and it does make sense), but forestalling the execution because he might help later? That seems very unlikely, to put it politely.
I'd rank the reasons not to execute him in the following order:
(1) I think the death penalty is wrong. (2) I think executing him will have negative consequences for Iraq. (3) I think he should have been held to account for all of the allegations against him, not just some. (4) I think the trial and execution were largely political in nature. (5) The trial process might have brought additional information to light about the extent and nature of his crimes, associations, et cetera.
If the question is whether he should have been executed, my reasoning may as well stop at (1).
[Edited to add (2), which I omitted accidentally.]
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quote:Even a liar reveals truthful information -- or where&how to obtain truthful information -- by the lies s/he tells.
Sure, but there's information and there's information. I mean, based on the lies Saddam Hussein tells, someone familiar with history would learn the information that Saddam was a brutal liar who didn't have much respect for anyone except himself.
That's information, but it's not very useful. Porter is quite right, too-things change with a very skillful and experienced liar.
quote:I don't think we can, no. Perhaps if his rapid execution hadn't essentially been a foregone conclusion, he might have been more cooperative. I doubt it, but I won't discount the possibility. Further, the trial process, conducted well, might well have brought to light additional information from sources other than him.
That's a pretty big 'perhaps', in the category of 'what if the sky was purple'? I mean, everyone knew Saddam would be either executed or freed by 'insurgents' of some sort in some way, or else kill himself. Life in prison was never a real possibility, and he knew that from the start.
I don't think it was possible for the trial process to have been conducted well. I mean, here in the United States and elsewhere where we've got hundreds of years of practice and reams and reams of laws written down, sometimes we still don't have good trials for simple murders or embezzlement or fraud. If screwups can happen in a sterile environment such as that-at least, an environment where sterility is possible-what real chance is there that a good trial will happen in Iraq, for Hussein?
quote:(1) I think the death penalty is wrong. (2) I think executing him will have negative consequences for Iraq. (3) I think he should have been held to account for all of the allegations against him, not just some. (4) I think the trial and execution were largely political in nature. (5) The trial process might have brought additional information to light about the extent and nature of his crimes, associations, et cetera.
These make sense to me. In most circumstances, I'm with you on number one...I say let `em rot in incarceration for the rest of their lives. But quantity has a quality all its own, and I think the quantity of murders attributed to his name merits a reexamination of my normal belief about #1.
I'd be interested to hear what the negative consequences will be for Iraq, that wouldn't have happened had he been left alive.
I think #3 feeds largely back into #1, since for all of his offenses to have been investigated and tried will take decades. I think the trial was largely political in nature, a political necessity. It's distasteful...but that's mitigated in my opinion by the fact that I literally cannot imagine a trial for Saddam Hussein within Iraq that wasn't political. Hitler's cronies weren't tried by Germans, after all.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: ...what real chance is there that a good trial will happen in Iraq, for Hussein?
That's exactly why I think the trial should have been carried out under the purview of something along the lines of the International Criminal Court, with a combination of Iraqi judges and foreign judges presiding. If possible I do think it would still have been best to hold the proceedings in Iraq, but that might not be possible given the security situation.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I think the quantity of murders attributed to his name merits a reexamination of my normal belief about #1.
I'd be interested to hear what the negative consequences will be for Iraq, that wouldn't have happened had he been left alive.
I can't help but wonder what would have happened in Chile if Augusto Pinochet had suffered the same fate as Saddam Hussein. That's the essence of my thinking on this: even Pinochet's funeral was divisive in Chile. His execution... well, I'm no expert on Chile, but I think that would have been worse. A political show trial and premature execution? Worse still.
I guess what I'm saying is that in cases like these, I think it's better overall for the former dictator to fade away than to burn out.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: I think #3 feeds largely back into #1, since for all of his offenses to have been investigated and tried will take decades.
All of the charges against him would have sufficed in place of all of his actual offences, which I agree would take a prohibitively long time to prosecute. Indeed, he might well have died of natural causes even while the trials for just the extant charges were ongoing, but as I've said, I think that would have been better for Iraq than what happened.
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quote:That's exactly why I think the trial should have been carried out under the purview of something along the lines of the International Criminal Court, with a combination of Iraqi judges and foreign judges presiding. If possible I do think it would still have been best to hold the proceedings in Iraq, but that might not be possible given the security situation.
There is a question of who has the right to try Saddam Hussein, though. I mean, what does a court housed in First-World Europe have to do with Saddam Hussein and Iraqis (as well as Kurds, Iranians, and Kuwaitis, among many others)? While it almost certainly would've resulted in a more fair trial, do the ends justify the means?
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quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What if someone has a different definition of Justice than you do? What if Justice is the rule of law, not making things right again? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Then I think they'd be mistaken.
______
I'd like to add that's it's even trickier to discern justice if things were never "right" to begin with, and you don't have any again to return to.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: There is a question of who has the right to try Saddam Hussein, though. I mean, what does a court housed in First-World Europe have to do with Saddam Hussein and Iraqis (as well as Kurds, Iranians, and Kuwaitis, among many others)?
Well, that's part of the reason -- that the allegations cross ethnic, religious, and national boundaries. However, looking into it a little further, it seems Jordan is the only country in the Middle East that has signed and ratified the Rome Statute of the ICC. Perhaps a special court could have been set up by the U.N. in cooperation with Iraq and the broader Arab League. I'm not suggesting that the West should have kidnapped Saddam Hussein and tried him with no Iraqi involvement.
Of course, I suppose it's entirely possible that something like this was suggested to -- and rejected by -- the Iraqi government.
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: While it almost certainly would've resulted in a more fair trial, do the ends justify the means?
I think so, yes, because the result would have been more than a fair trial. I think the execution will only foster more violence, though I'd love to be wrong.
Keep in mind, too, that I'm saying this as someone who generally advocates less Western meddling in the Middle East, not more.
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I wouldn't be surprised. Given the timing, it also wouldn't surprise me if that happened at a time when I wasn't paying attention to the news at all, and so I just missed it.
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Whether Hussein's death was suspicious, it was plausibly not at our hands, and if there is a civil war, at least it won't be our civil war. A big crime like this could be just what's necessary to draw all of the non-Sunnis together in a deep way to validate the judicial proceeding, and while it may lead to some awful crimes against Sunnis, a state sponsored death validates a government as much as an election or a winning soccer team.
I guess what I'm saying is that even though a state court may have been brisk with administering justice, everyone who supports the outcome may have to acknowledge and possibly even respect the existence of the state and the proceedings which led to that outcome, which may be a step in the right direction.
Of course there is the opposite, everyone who doesn't support the outcome has another reason to ignore procedural democracy wholesale, but considering that Hussein wasn't a saint, summoning indignation at his death is a bit of a job.
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It's a queer sense of ownership, but look at it like this, the saying goes, "If you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword." If you substitute "rule of law" for "sword," and then assume that the proposition works both ways, then we may have a government motto: "If you die by the rule of law, then you will live by the rule of law."
I just wonder if it's possible to guilt or shame all of the non-Sunni Iraqies into being good democrats, after showing them that by being good democrats, they can kill whomever they want. Once we get them down the road to rationalizing the righteousness of the procedure that killed Saddam, the serpent has already bit, and they'll be able to rationalize all sorts of great and terrible feats, permissable because they went through all of the right legal channels.
The implications of this thesis are far-reaching, but coming from a guy who isn't big on the rule of law, I think that this is something that wise people should be paying attention to. _______
On a completely different note-- but not quite substantial enough to have its own thread-- I read an article, I think it was in the Atlantic Monthly, about materialism in China. It seems that with the confluence of the one child policy, the push for economic growth, and the lack of a religious foundation, poor chinese men are out of luck in a major way. Materialism is catching hold there in a way that's qualitatively different than what we've seen in the western world. Since there are more men than women, the women have their pick, and they don't have 2000 years of Beatitudes telling them to give the poor and the meek a chance, the push for flashy cars and prospects is becoming an issue. I don't know if this portends that in 40 years, China is going to be a country of of half a billion unabashed gold diggers, pushing men to perform economically which in turn pushes US men to perform(because we like being number 1(I used the royal we, I don't mind so much being 3 or 4)) thereby affecting our national priorities and character. I'm curious to see how this plays out.
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We made a horrible mistake, can we clone the old bloody handed murderer still to make it right? We must undo this crime against humanity! Bwaaaa Posts: 475 | Registered: Aug 2006
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Wow. Some days, it's like there's this subconscious, pathological desire to lose hearts and minds in Iraq.
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quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh It's a typical political tactic. You're frankly a partisan sheep if you believe it's solely the province of liberals. You might make a case that liberals have been more famous for such things in the past decade (especially if you listen to 'Fair and Balanced'), but that just might have more to do with minority-party politics than the accusation you're making.
It's also entertaining how quickly you revert to liberal conspiracy-plot-overthrow-the-majority rhetoric, too. It must be a comfortable world in which you live, where your opposition is so neatly and uniformly contemptible. Doesn't really make you strain your brain very much, I expect. The only question of interest is, did you arrive at it because you don't like to strain your brain? Or do you not strain your brain because you've arrived at that philosophy?
You know, that's an interesting point beyond the current discussion. I once commented elsewhere that as a nation born of rebellion (and a nation that is, perhaps, overly fond of Star Wars ) we have an overfondness of identifying with either the common man or the righteous, misunderstood, bemartyred rebels (who all will flock to join, on that magic day they see the light, tra la.)
(On a partisan note, I wouldn't be the first to comment on the absurdity of a president from a highly connected family running for a second term with a Congress in which his party held a majority trying to come across as a maverick political outsider.)
To the point where no pundit or editorialist can simply state their opinion, but have to insist that anyone who would disagree with them is... Not one of the people with common sense, not a patriot, one of those loony (insert currently demonized political leaning)... Take your pick. It's not enough to state something and actually appeal to common sense, you have to make people afraid to disagree with you.
Hmm. Not an endearing trend.
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Twinky, I also think the ICC doesn't have jurisdiction over former heads of state. Could be wrong though.
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I don't think that is a problem, Imogen. Even if Saddam has some functional immunity as a former head of state, this could certainly be waived by Iraq's current government or possibly by the Security Council. A larger problem is article 12 (1) of the ICC Statute which state that "[t]he Court has jurisdiction only with respect to crimes committed after the entry into force of this Statute." I'm unsure whether this precondition can be circumvented by a Security Council referral in accordance with article 13 (b) (which would be necessary in any case since, as Twinky pointed out, Iraq has not ratified the Statute).
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"The International Criminal Court (ICC)...can only prosecute crimes that were committed on or after 1 July 2002, the date its founding treaty, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, entered into force." And while it theoretically could prosecutes heads of state, the ICC is a 'court of last resort' which can "only exercise its jurisdiction when national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute such crimes."
"Among Western democracies, it [the death penalty] is actualy illegal in all but one state (that would be us). Just to point out that there is no relationship between capital punishment and the rule of law."
While correlation isn't proof of causation, the US is also the most lawless by far of all FirstWorld nations . ~3% of the population is currently in jail, in prison, on probation, or on parole. Note that the tabulation does not include those who have already "paid for their crime" but remain under government supervision due to "sex criminal registration" laws. Or those who have "paid for their crime" and still have their records following them when it comes to gaining employment and housing.
And a few other Western democracies have the death penalty. They just haven't used it for a long time. eg The UK was recently having debate over whether to rid itself of the last capital offense (treason during wartime, I think). etc
"China is going to be...pushing men to perform economically which in turn pushes US men to perform because we like being number 1 (I used the royal we (I don't mind so much being 3 or 4))..."
Number 3 or 4? Across the socio-economic strata from the richest to the poorest, an overwhelming supermajority of Americans think that being #40,000,000* is "enough to live the good life".
"Whether Hussein's death was suspicious, it was plausibly not at our hands..."
"...and if there is a civil war, at least it won't be our civil war."
If you don't count the American soldiers and contractors who are gonna be killed and maimed for being in the middle of that civil war, or their surviving families and loved ones. And if you exclude the trillion or so dollars that US taxpayers are gonna hafta pay for Dubya's bread&circus.
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"You know, that's an interesting point beyond the current discussion. I once commented elsewhere that as a nation born of rebellion (and a nation that is, perhaps, overly fond of Star Wars ) we have an over fondness of identifying with either the common man or the righteous, misunderstood, bemartyred rebels (who all will flock to join, on that magic day they see the light, tra la.)"
I agree. While the U.S. lacks the Latin American and Marxist propinquity from filling cities with plazas of this and that revolution and creating groups with gloriously bizarre names like the Institutional Revolutionary Party, we are still slaves to revolution.
Liberal Democrats, who are virtually nonexistent on the American radar screen, are notoriously opposed to the "Common Man" mythos. This is not to say they are not interested in alleviating poverty or in improving the lives of the working class. Their choice in doing so through free markets combined with social services, however, is not popular with the working classes, who were traditionally Liberal. Ironically it has gained some acceptance with the wealthy and the old aristocracies and great acceptance with the Roman Catholic Church, the two groups who were originally most opposed to Liberalism. The Church, of course, prefers parties more socially conservative than the Liberals and Christian Democrats where they exist, but Liberalism is at least in line with Vatican economic teachings, in as much as any real world group is in line with the idealistic Church.
Despite their routes in, and frequent use of the term, radicalism, Liberal Democrats are anti-revolutionary at core. They believe in progress (who doesn't), but they also nurture a preference for stability which is reminiscent of their Conservative opponents
The German Free Democrats (whose motto, "So viel Staat wie nötig, so wenig Staat wie möglich!," or "As much State as needed, as little State as possible!" is an international rallying cry) once joked that it was the party of "Besserverdienenden" ("Better-earning peoples") in response to a Socialist tax on this group.
They were, in a sense, right. Their supporters, in common with almost all Liberals everywhere consists of middle-class and upper-middle class people with university degrees, not the "Common Man."
Canada, which celebrates union rather than revolution, and is a largely middle-class and educated state is the only major country I can think where a Liberal party has ruled out of coalition (Andorra, which is steadfastly Liberal, hardly counts).
However, Liberals are still a major political force in most of the Western world, seldom out of ruling or opposition coalitions. The exception is in the revolutionary states, France and the U.S., neither of which has an officially recognized Liberal party.
I am not sure if this has any meaning, but it is interesting.
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Irami are you SURE the women are outnumbering the men and not vice versa? Pretty sure most Chinese people opt for boys when they only have one child.
----
On a different note, I finally watched a version of the execution. Executions at least in the west are supposed to be very solemn and quite and yet they have not always been so, apparently in some parts of the middle east alot of shouting goes on.
I think I might prefer the overwhelming sound of noise were I being hung as at least when it fades away you know death is near. What do you do when everything is so silent?
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If the US had stepped in an unilaterally imposed a commuting of Saddam's sentence, I think we'd have a bigger problem than currently, though that remains to be seen.
There was no way we were going to win that one, besides, if you look at Middle Eastern justice across the board, what happened is not atypical. They are big fans of swift, utterly brutal justice.
I think it was someone at the restaurant I work at once told me a story of when he visited Saudi Arabia. His guide took him all over the place and then they got to a public square. A man in the square was being put to death for something, and when they found out a westerner (or more specifically, an American) was in the crowd, he was rushed to the front of the crowd to get a first hand view and they chopped the guy's head off.
If we're so outraged by this, where's the big push from the West to reform Middle Eastern law? You'll have to forgive me, but I can't muster more support for mercy being given to SADDAM than any of the others who are killed or maimed for sometimes minor crimes. I realize he's a higher profile guy, and maybe some people see this as a poster child event for talking about the death penalty, but come on, other than sheer morality, I don't see any of the traditional arguments against the death penalty working with him.
Bottom line, what do you think would have happened to Saddam if any of the attempted overthrowings had worked in the last 20 years? What do you think would have happened if we'd turned him over and then evacuated all our troops from Iraq? I don't see any reason at all to blame the US. We would have been screwed no matter what we did, so we chose to back off and let them administer the type of justice they've chosen to adopt.
And I think China has MUCH bigger problems than golddiggers rumming amok. Farmland is being erased all over the country in the name of development, and waterways are being polluted as government inspectors ignore pollution guidelines. Factories have environmentally friendly scrubbers and cleaners to clean sewage and chemicals, but don't use them because they are too expensive, as the law only demands that they have them, not that they operate them.
They can develop their economy all they want, and steal our technology and defense secrets, but at the end of the day they seem to be doing a fine job of poisoning themselves without any help from us. We won't have to invade them to beat them, we'll just have to stop selling them bread.
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) we have an overfondness of identifying with either the common man or the righteous, misunderstood, bemartyred rebels (who all will flock to join, on that magic day they see the light, tra la.)
