JUST SHOOT HIM NOW!

The Risks of A Trial (Sergio Romano, Corriere Della Sera, July 3rd, 2004)

Having discarded both hypotheses, America decided to agree to the Iraqi requests, and allow the former dictator to be tried by his fellow citizens. It is probably the best of the choices available. We now know how arduous it is to entrust to international justice a statesman who has, at times, governed with the consensus of his fellow citizens. The British did well a few years ago to get rid of Pinochet, and the Americans were probably wrong to insist that the Belgrade government hand over Milosevic to the tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. His trial had two negative effects. It allowed the accused to transform the courtroom into a political platform, and it created a dangerous sense of nationalistic self-pity in Serbia. Doing justice after the collapse of a dictatorship is a delicate problem that cannot be tackled using abstract moral criteria, and ignoring what might happen in the country concerned. In many cases, it is better to let matters be settled "in the family," according to local custom, with a short trial, a summary verdict, and an outcome that is, if possible, swift and sharp. The murder of Ceausescu and his wife allowed Romania to turn the page. Mussolini's firing squad had the merit of avoiding a long trial that would have prolonged the climate of civil war. The mistake in that case was not the firing squad; it was what Republican life senator Leo Valiani once called the "Mexican butchery" of Piazzale Loreto.

It remains to be seen, however, whether Saddam's trial will present these characteristics. Above all, it will not be rapid, and neither will it be, it seems, entirely Iraqi. After the preliminary hearing, it will be necessary to gather the evidence and draw up a list of witnesses. It will not be enough to dig up the mass graves, and question the survivors. It will have to be proved that every crime was desired and ordered by Saddam. It will not be enough to refer to the massacre of the Kurds. It will be necessary to explain why, after those events, so many governments continued to maintain intense diplomatic and economic relationships with the dictator. It will not be enough to document the repression of the Shiite revolt in 1991. It will be necessary to explain why George Bush Senior, the father of the current president, allowed Saddam to use helicopters in the south against the Shiites, and prevented him from doing the same thing in the north against the Kurds.

This trial will be protracted, political and inevitably help the terrorist insurgents, who are now being referred to widely as the "Resistance". The new and fragile Iraqi Government may not be able to survive it. It will empower political dissidents and it will terrify, and ultimately exhaust, the millions of ordinary Iraqis who are grateful for having been delivered from the monster. You can be sure that is what the left wants and will be working hard for.