SAY A PRAYER FOR IRAQ

Saddam stands trial at last for massacre (Oliver Poole, The Telegraph, October 19th, 2005)

Saddam Hussein will go on trial in Baghdad today in the first court case brought against an Arab leader for crimes against his own people. But the legal process will be under scrutiny as well, with widespread accusations that it exists merely to enforce "victor's justice".

The former Iraqi president faces charges related to the killing of 143 people in the village of Dujail in 1982. It is expected to be the first of several trials intended to bring him to account for the brutalities inflicted on Iraq during his rule.[...]

In the past eight months many of the Iraqi judges and lawyers have received training in international law from British, American and other international experts.

Mock trials were staged in London and a number of western legal experts have expressed faith in the court's ability to administer the rule of law.

But human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have repeatedly given warnings that the trial risks not being fair.

Whether Iraq’s future is bright or not, it is impossible not to be awed by what Iraqis have accomplished in the past year. A huge turnout at the polls under conditions of extreme danger to elect its first democratic government, a popular constitution approved by all ethnic and sectarian groups and now an unprecedented public calling to account of a tyrannical leader through legal process. All this is historically counter-cultural and has been accomplished in the face of a violent insurgency and the dismissive and strident opposition of most of the Western intelligentsia. Even conservative voices are coming more and more to waffle and wring their hands over “international norms” and other such tranzi fables.

To put all this in an historical context, is this not as if, after Cromwell won the English civil war, he took only two years to establish full-blown late 19th century British democratic constitutionalism in the face of unremitting criticism from scholars and churchmen and ongoing civil strife at home?