A rchive Date
[ 15-12-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Iraq ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/worthington_dec15.html
Independence Day for Iraqis arrives
But what to do with Saddam?
By PETER WORTHINGTON - Toronto Sun
December 15, 2003
The good news is that they got him. The bad news is that he was taken alive. That's the immediate, visceral reaction to the capture of Saddam Hussein.
On reflection, perhaps it's better, more cathartic, to have him dragged, unresisting from a hole in the ground like a scruffy rat. Extraordinarily, not a shot was fired by the 600 U.S. 4th Infantry Division troops assisted by Kurds and Iraqis, that winkled him out.
The eruption of joy and celebration in Baghdad says it all - shots fired into the air, candy hurled by Iraqis to Iraqis. Videos of Saddam, looking disheveled, bearded, even pathetic, are more destructive to his image and symbolism than, say, his bullet-ridden corpse would have been.
The big unanswered question that looms is what happens next? Every authority warns that too much should not be read into the capture of Saddam - that the road ahead is bumpy, uneasy, even violent. True, but the guts have been torn out of Iraqi resistance. Saddam's capture is the end of the war, not the tearing down of Saddam's statue in Baghdad.
For the first time, every Iraqi now knows that Saddam is finished. That there'll be no return to his tyranny, as there was when U.S. President Bush's dad called off the first war, and Saddam returned to fill mass graves with 400,000 Muslims.
Thirty years of tyranny inspire caution.
Saddam's capture will not only dispirit those who fought on in his name, it will give courage to those Iraqis who weren't sure, were hesitant to support the Americans. What Saddam and others who'll now come forward will say about weapons of mass destruction is footnote stuff. Almost irrelevant.
There's so much proof of his tyranny and crimes against humanity, that it becomes irrefutable that the coalition led by U.S., Britain and Australia were doing what the UN was set up to do, and to its shame has never really done.
What happens to Saddam now, is a big question. Iraqis would love to hold his trial and quickly find him guilty and string him up. That's their way.
Folly would be to have an American trial with a year's delay and endless court appearances. Or a war crimes charade like the one against Milosevic in the Hague. Acceptable would be a military trial by coalition forces that fought Saddam, aided by Iraqis - with traditional military sentence to torturers.
Somehow, Saddam has to be executed. Otherwise, some in the west who held rallies against deposing Saddam by force, will campaign that we mustn't do to Saddam what he did to others. Poppycock.
Still, Saddam's capture is a Christmas present to the world. He has no friends, and wasn't even leading the resistance in Iraq, other than as a figurehead. A renegade in hiding, possibly sold out by those around him. Saddam's capture indicates that the Americans have been steadily gaining in Iraq, despite enduring more casualties in peace than in the war.
George W. Bush is lucky, and will benefit hugely from the capture. The "hawks" in the Iraq war debate feel vindicated.
Howard Dean, leading the Democrats' race to be the presidential contender, has suffered another grievous blow. Britain's Tony Blair benefits, and his diminished popularity for supporting Bush will be reversed. Curiously, our new PM, Paul Martin, will benefit. He can say a lot of positive things that will go along way towards atoning for his predecessor's opposition to Bush deposing Saddam.
A fresh page in Canada-U.S. relations beckons.
The impression is that if Martin instead of Jean Chretien were PM after 9/11, Canada might not have sent troops to Iraq (our military can't fight a war), but we would at least have wished the Americans luck, instead of urging Saddam's continued tyranny.
Anyway Dec. 14 is now Iraq's Independence Day.
Previous columns by Peter Worthington Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@tor.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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