Was justice done ?

Not yet fully civilized societies still practice state murder, which they prefer to call capital punishment. So, was Saddam Hussein killed this morning in Bagdad, on the eve of the Islamic feast of forgiveness by the USA-controlled local shiite government. Was justice served ?

Justice would certainly have been better served if, instead of murdering him as a punishment for one single crime, a real democratically elected government, free from outside pressure, had tried him for all his crimes, including his American-backed invasion of Iran, which cost more than a million human lives.

Will Iraq try also all the accomplices of Saddam Hussein ? Will Iraq invoke, as other countries did, the right of « universal jurisdiction » in cases of crimes against humanity, and bring to justice all the Western powers that cooperated with Saddam Hussein during decades before toppling him, and that sold him the chemicals he needed to spread Iran with chemical weapons before doing the same thing to the Kurds ? How many of our politicians would hang from the gallows of Bagdad if the same type of so-called « justice » was applied to them by the Iraqi courts ?

Armand Veilleux

December 30, 2006