By most indications, the trial of Saddam Hussein for killing more than 140 Iraqi Shi’ites in the town of Dujail in retaliation for an assassination attempt, has been a mockery. Saddam is undoubtedly guilty of this war crime, as he is of the more devastating Anfal campaign against the Kurds in the late 1980s and the Shi’ites in 1991. But the trial, which was supposed to resemble the Nuremburg Trials or the Adolf Eichmann trial, has turned into a circus. The presiding judge was fired in the middle of it, Saddam’s co-defendants showed up in their underwear, many of Saddam’s lawyers have been killed, prosecutions witnesses have been intimidated or killed, and Saddam has used the defendant’s box as a platform for railing against the new regime. The conclusion is largely foregone; it would be shocking if the verdict was not guilty or not a death sentence. But the process that led us here has been a disaster.
What most people will talk about is the impact on the US elections. Did they time the verdict for maximum impact on the US election? While I wouldn’t put anything past Karl Rove, I think it’s impossible in this case that the Iraqis would have timed the verdict this way. The trial has been such a disaster that it would have been impossible for the buffoons in charge of the trial to time it this way. In many ways, the Saddam trial is evidence of how LITTLE the US controls Iraq.
On the question of whether or not the almost certain death sentence will somehow redound to the GOP’s benefit, I find this argument equally silly. The American people are not stupid. The reason Americans are so angry at the Iraq war is not that they think Saddam Hussein was a nice fellow. It’s that the Bush Administration has utterly failed to control the peace in the country after Saddam’s downfall. Saddam’s capture in December 2003 helped Bush because people thought it might lead to the end of the insurgency. But it did nothing of the sort, and so support plummeted again. Americans care about victory more than anything else. Bush’s rhetoric about victory rings completely hollow now, and a Saddam sentence will do nothing to change that. If anything, it will only remind voters of how bad Iraq is after Saddam’s downfall (if they needed any reminding). It’s become almost acceptable in mainstream discourse to suggest that only Saddam could keep relative peace in Iraq.
For Iraqis, the verdict will have symbolic importance, but not as much as it could have had. For a country to condemn its own former ruler is a serious undertaking. Shi’ites will be glad to see the verdict, but their joy will be tempered by the living hell of modern Iraq. The Kurds will be happiest, perhaps, because they haven’t suffered like the Shi’ites after Saddam. But the Anfal trial is yet to come, and they might express their joy more at that outcome and not this one.
So what does all this mean? Depends on who you ask. But for the American election season, which everybody is concerned about now, I think it means nothing.