By taking Saddam's life, Iraqis do justice.
BY MARTY PERETZ
Sunday, January 7, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST
This is not the case of Oliver David Cruz, who was executed on Aug. 9, 2000. Cruz, whose IQ ranged from 63 to 83, had raped and murdered a 24-year-old woman stationed at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. If Cruz had lived until 2002, when the Supreme Court ruled the death sentence could not be imposed on mentally retarded people, he would have spent his life in prison. He was what we used to call, unsentimentally but truthfully, "an idiot." To me it was axiomatic that killing him was unjust. I do not ever really feel that the state is righteous when it snuffs out even a hardened criminal's breath.
Saddam Hussein's execution was another matter entirely. Those who do not see that are blind to the implicit social compact of any polity, and to its always precarious situation. What this tyrant did in murdering hundreds of thousands and terrorizing millions more, within Iraq and outside it, was to normalize brutality, establish falsity and hysteria as the common language, and routinely invade the boundaries of private life. Saddam's crimes unraveled whatever authenticity and spontaneity was possible in the artificial confines of a post-Versailles state.
He also brought dread to this state's neighbors. Men and women trembled at his name. And for what purpose did Saddam put the people of Iraq and the region through these horrors? For the nihilistic purpose of sustaining his rule and that of his clan. And yet, as no one has reminded us in recent times, he also murdered kith and kin.
Seen from this perspective, the attacks on Saddam's death sentence, self-righteous and oh, so elementally moral, are petty and falsely framed. I am afraid it is the Vatican that has failed humankind most glaringly in this regard. True, it is not the Vicar of Christ who has spoken, but his designate, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. Rome tends to speak portentously, urbi et orbi. Yet such speech is also often simple-minded.
"Capital punishment is not natural death," said Cardinal Martino. OK. That's obvious. So what? "Life is a gift that the Lord has given us," the cardinal continued, "and we must protect it from conception until natural death." In this rendering, are we supposed to imagine that Saddam is an innocent unborn fetus in his mother's womb? Is this a debate over abortion? Does Cardinal Martino have no conception of the dimensions of the tyrant's crimes? (Cardinal Martino does not always speak in such pabulum. He is often aggressive, as when he condemned the allied intervention in Iraq as a "war of aggression." The Vatican then told journalists that the cardinal was speaking for himself, not for John Paul II. Martino picked up many anti-American tropes during the 16 years he represented the Church at the U.N. Sixteen years, poor man, no wonder, he's a little overwrought and also disingenuous.)
Of course, many of the other critics of the death sentence do not speak of life as a benefaction from God. The folks who echo Amnesty International's denunciation would be horrified at the sheer thought. Ditto the European Union. The same for Romano Prodi, the socialist prime minister of Italy. And the antiterrorism officer at the U.N. Plus the governments of France, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Germany.
Marco Pancetta, head of the Radical Party in Italy, had declared a hunger strike, was ready to go to Baghdad to petition for a "pardon." Yes, a hunger strike. Until death? Does Cardinal Martino believe a hunger strike natural? And, yes, a pardon. Was he out of his mind? Saddam's death has cheated Mr. Pancetta of his foolishness. Had the convict lived, we would have had to endure candlelight vigils throughout the soft countries. Soft power, indeed.
The burden of most of these objections to the death penalty is that the trial was not really fair. Now, these were certainly the most judicious legal proceedings ever held in modern Iraq. Is this not superior to victors' justice? The defendant had legal counsel of his own choosing, among them Ramsey Clark, not so mentally stable is my guess, but a former attorney-general of the U.S. and not an easily intimidated advocate. What's more, as Fouad Ajami has pointed out, the accused performed histrionics that were tolerated even though they made havoc of courtroom order. If Saddam were the accused in a U.S. tribunal, he would have been bound and gagged. In Saddam's own Iraq, he would have been lashed, at a minimum.
The Arab world is somewhat split about the sentence. Yemen, little Yemen, has actually announced that the country "unanimously" condemns everything about the trial: the process, the verdict and the punishment. You get some sense of what political discourse is like in a state where everything is (or is said to be) unanimous. Doubtless, Sunni Baathists were very close to unanimous in opposing it. But the Arab world and its non-Arab Muslim cousins, whatever they feel about the armed foreign presence in Iraq, could not honestly make the case against the penalty of death--although some made the argument nonetheless. It is simply too routine, too ingrained in the fabric of their societies to be shocking. After all, you can juridically be condemned to death for having committed adultery (that is, if you are a woman), for stealing, for heresy and blasphemy. Moderate Arabs will breathe a sigh of relief now that the dictator is dead. And also those non-moderate Arabs whom he threatened.
Two surprising trends, one a great relief. The relief is that the people of Western Europe seem to be more sensible than their governments. Even the French, the Italians, the Spanish and others support the taking of Saddam's life. Like the Poles, and their prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. You have to have lived under a tyranny within your own memory to know why the tyrant should be punished, and punished decisively.
The other trend is a bit confusing. It shows itself especially in our stalwart ally, Great Britain, where the Labour government still adheres to the traditional alliance, in war and in peace. Margaret Beckett, Tony Blair's foreign secretary, spoke strongly in support of the hangman's noose.
But, ironically, there were counter-indications from the Tory right. Frustrated by its years in the political wilderness, the Conservatives much resent Labour's alliance with George Bush, even though they ridicule it. The brilliant showman-parliamentarian Boris Johnson, shadow minister for higher education, elicited from Ms. Beckett's predecessor, Jack Straw, already two years ago a statement of opposition to the ultimate penalty. Relying on Britain's longstanding opposition to capital punishment, they were working in consort against Mr. Blair's fidelity to how America sees the world. The prospect of Saddam's hanging would be their instrument.
Another, more recent sign of Conservative estrangement (not the only one) from the historically axiomatic bond with the U.S. is a querulous on-line column by the querulous Peregrine Worsthorne asserting that "Saddam was a butcher, so was Truman." Now, this is not a logical argument for anything. But his point was that Saddam's "cruel tyranny had at least provided the people with a degree of security quite unimaginable under conditions of freedom and democracy . . . a reign of fear may be the only effective system of government." This is cynicism of an especially low order. And if it gains currency in the house of Winston Churchill, where can it not become common wisdom?
Saddam has already swung from the ropes. May his soul be tormented for eternity. If Saddam were a pious and literate Christian--actually, he wasn't even a pious Muslim--he might have recognized, as Dante did for Nimrod, that "he was his own accuser." His life is its own accusation.
The question, then, is not whether Iraq will recover from the oppressor's death. The question is whether Iraq will recover from the oppressor's rule. The execution of this monstrous man was not intended to be a deterrent to evil. There are probably no deterrents to real evil and real evildoers. But a community can punish its own pharaohs. That punishment will be the most significant sovereign act the people of Iraq have ever done. This is an act of recovery by itself.
Mr. Peretz is editor in chief of The New Republic.
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