And it would certainly have required avoiding the unseemly spectacle of death by hanging, projecting an ugly imagery around the world that will satisfy some unhealthy appetites for vengeance, but will also ensure that this terrible political figure will be revered as a martyr by many Muslims around the world.
It is likely that the adjourned separate trial on the allegations concerning the Kurds will be continued, but without the presence of Saddam Hussein as the principal defendant, it will be Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark!
As the Nuremberg trial of surviving German leaders after World War II made clear, the main achievement of such criminal prosecutions is not punishment of the now disempowered leaders, but political education by way of compiling evidence of the terrible wrongdoing of those accused and showing that the contrasting way of the victors is one of fairness and due process. Again, we need to ask why was this truncated and dysfunctional approach used, leading to the execution of the main culprit before the worst crimes of his regime were even considered.
The only credible explanation is that such an approach conformed to the needs of the occupying power. Iraq was a strategic ally of the United States in the s, the decade in which the worst excesses of Baathist rule took place, including the persecution and execution of religious leaders. It was the United States that supplied many of the components of the chemical weapons used against the Kurds, and then relied on its diplomatic influence to shield Baghdad from censure in the aftermath of these shocking events.
Crediting Saddam with preserving the integrity of Iraq is far different from absolving him, but at times the two get confused. Neither of these points stands up to much scrutiny. The American public was already primed, having spent the s periodically bombing Iraq and imposing severe sanctions, leading to hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. The question of whether we had the right to do any of this, much less the ability to shepherd a peaceful occupation, was never properly considered.
Saddam saw a protracted insurgency as inevitable. We have lost so much, and the Iraqis even more. But why expect any change? The U. You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser and improve your visit to our site. Jacob Silverman SilvermanJacob. Bush , War On Terror , Books. He did much to modernize Iraq's infrastructure, industry and health-care system, and raised social services, education and farming subsidies to levels unparalleled in other Arab countries in the region. He also nationalized Iraq's oil industry, just before the energy crisis of , which resulted in massive revenues for the nation.
During that same time, however, Saddam helped develop Iraq's first chemical weapons program and, to guard against coups, created a powerful security apparatus, which included both Ba'athist paramilitary groups and the People's Army, and which frequently used torture, rape and assassination to achieve its goals.
In , when al-Bakr attempted to unite Iraq and Syria, in a move that would have left Saddam effectively powerless, Saddam forced al-Bakr to resign, and on July 16, , Saddam became president of Iraq. Less than a week later, he called an assembly of the Ba'ath Party.
During the meeting, a list of 68 names was read out loud, and each person on the list was promptly arrested and removed from the room. Of those 68, all were tried and found guilty of treason and 22 were sentenced to death. By early August , hundreds of Saddam's political foes had been executed.
The same year that Saddam ascended to the presidency, Ayatollah Khomeini led a successful Islamic revolution in Iraq's neighbor to the northeast, Iran. Saddam, whose political power rested in part upon the support of Iraq's minority Sunni population, worried that developments in Shi-ite majority Iran could lead to a similar uprising in Iraq.
In response, on September 22, , Saddam ordered Iraqi forces to invade the oil-rich region of Khuzestan in Iran. The conflict soon blossomed into an all-out war, but Western nations and much of the Arab world, fearful of the spread of Islamic radicalism and what it would mean to the region and the world, laid their support firmly behind Saddam, despite the fact that his invasion of Iran clearly violated international law.
During the conflict, these same fears would cause the international community to essentially ignore Iraq's use of chemical weapons, its genocidal dealing with its Kurdish population and its burgeoning nuclear program.
On August 20, , after years of intense conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead on both sides, a ceasefire agreement was finally reached. In the aftermath of the conflict, seeking a means of revitalizing Iraq's war-ravaged economy and infrastructure, at the end of the s, Saddam turned his attention toward Iraq's wealthy neighbor, Kuwait.
Using the justification that it was a historical part of Iraq, on August 2, , Saddam ordered the invasion of Kuwait. A UN Security Council resolution was promptly passed, imposing economic sanctions on Iraq and setting a deadline by which Iraqi forces must leave Kuwait.
When the January 15, deadline was ignored, a UN coalition force headed by the United States confronted Iraqi forces, and a mere six weeks later, had driven them from Kuwait. A ceasefire agreement was signed, the terms of which included Iraq dismantling its germ and chemical weapons programs. If you don't talk bad about him or his family, then you are safe.
After that it was a complete chaos. The situation is not getting any better. I am from Mosul and you know how the situation is like. Everything is destroyed. Zaid Ridha, Ridha lives in Diwaniyah, a predominantly Shiite city located about miles south of Baghdad. He was 13 when Saddam was executed. I remember I woke up and found my dad having the TV on the Al Arabiya channel, and there were live scenes of Saddam Hussein's execution. I said, 'What!? The day has finally come.
As I remember, it was a very special day, especially for my father and my family. We suffered a lot. I don't know how to describe, but the joy was overwhelming everybody. So everybody was in the street, and everybody was firing [gunshots in the air] in celebration. And everybody was smiling My dad said that he wanted his friends to see this day, the day they were all dreaming of, 35 years.
My father, my family felt that Saddam Hussein was not punished enough for his crimes. He has many, many terrible crimes. Not just only to Iraq, but also to our neighboring countries.
In the book we studied in primary school, the first page always had Saddam's face. Between every 10 to 15 page there was a quote by Saddam Hussein When the regime fell, I said wow, I will never have to see his face again. Na'eem Al Zubaidi,
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