ABLE WAS I :

New Middle East, part 2 (Amir Oren, August 10, 2002

In other periods it would have been possible to suggest to Saddam that he go into well-protected exile on a remote island, like the defeated Napoleon. In our time, Saddam, younger and more dangerous than Augusto Pinochet, can look forward to a future at least as bitter as that of Slobodan Milosevic. In Netanyahu's opinion, the newly constituted International Criminal Court for war crimes does away with the convenient conversion of the title of "ruler" into "refugee": if Saddam survives a six-and-a-half ton bomb or a well-aimed volley, he will be hauled into court and tried. If the only alternative available to him is death, he may try to take with him millions of people, most of them Israelis.

Most of this essay is a raphsodic appraisal of the current American/Israeli relationship, until you get to that jarring last paragraph. You do have to wonder, if the world has now criminalized bad government, why any dictator would ever surrender power without a fight. And as more of them get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, mustn't we anticipate that sooner or later one of them is going to try to take as many people as he can with him? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 10, 2002 2:27 PM