Editorial

The Conviction of Saddam Hussein Does Not Equal Justice for the Iraqi People

As expected, on November 5 Saddam Hussein was declared guilty of crimes against humanity and was sentenced to death by hanging. There was never any doubt that this would be the outcome of the trial, mainly because the trial was conducted under conditions of foreign occupation, the mandate of the court was set by the U.S. occupiers and the occupiers demanded a guilty verdict. This is not to say that Hussein is innocent. In fact, he is guilty of far greater crimes than the killing of 148 people in the town of Dujail for which he was charged. However, the conditions under which he was tried and convicted did more to cover up than expose the nature of his crimes and his accomplices.

From the time that the charges were announced there has been widespread speculation that these particular charges were chosen because any other charges would have brought with them the potential to embarrass and discredit the United States, which was complicit in most of the crimes against humanity committed by the regime of Saddam Hussein. It is well-known that Hussein launched his eight-year war against Iran in September 1980 at the bidding of the U.S. and with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and various other reactionary Arab regimes. If he were to be charged with crimes against humanity for that offense there would have been legitimate questions as to why U.S. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and various Arab leaders were not charged along with him.

Similarly, if Saddam were to be charged with the gassing of thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988 there would be legitimate questions as to why current U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney, Defence Minister Donald Rumsfeld and various other U.S. officials were not in the dock with him for their role in providing Hussein’s regime with chemical and biological weapons and ongoing intelligence on the deployment of Iranian and Kurdish forces. Even the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait could raise sticky questions for the Americans who, in the days preceding the attack assured Saddam Hussein that he had a legitimate claim against Kuwait and that the U.S. would not intervene.

In other words, the American occupiers chose to prosecute the one case where no American involvement in Saddam’s crimes was apparent. Even so, it has been reported that the U.S. imposed restrictions on the court prohibiting it from charging any foreign citizens in the crime and banning any testimony incriminating foreigners.

The regime of Saddam Hussein committed countless crimes against the Iraqi people and officials of that regime deserve to be punished by the Iraqi people. However, in order for justice to prevail, those who put that regime in power, supplied it with weapons of mass destruction, trained its security forces in the art of torture and kept it in power for decades through various means must also face punishment at the hands of the Iraqi people. Barring such a development the trial, conviction and sentencing of Saddam Hussein amounts to nothing more than “victors’ justice”, not punishment for his crimes against humanity, but punishment for his failure to unquestionably obey his American masters.

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