So, Saddam Hussein has been found guilty and has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court. For all the war supporters, this will be the great justification for all the pain, all the suffering, and all the misery, and a hoped-for tonic for Republican fortunes on Tuesday. It will be used to demonstrate the triumph of the “rule of law,” that meaningless phrase so frequently on the lips of those who glory in the alleged moral, political and economic superiority of Anglo-America.
But the “rule of law,” such as it is, has always struck me as utterly insufficient when dealing with mass murder and tyranny and those who perpetrate it, especially given how eager the law and its supporters are to perpetrate mass murder themselves. It seems strange to have a trial and charge someone with such grave crimes. It also makes the judgement of Man superior to all other judgements — how on earth can Hermann Goering, who committed suicide in his jail cell while awaiting his death sentence, be said to have cheated anyone or anything? And what does it say about those tyrants who escape the dock and hangman, to live out a relatively comfortable exile?
The only modern tyrants I can think of who got their true due were the Ceauşescus of Romania, who got the rough justice they deserved. Same with Mussolini. That’s the only kind of justice I think works for real tyrants — a rope, a tall tree or lamppost, and an angry mob. Lawyers trying tyrants and judges presiding over trials of tyrants just look silly. Or tyrannical themselves.
7:02 am on November 5, 2006
