Thus All Too Seldom to Tyrants
GELERNTER, DAVID
Thus All Too Seldom to Tyrants Saddam's punishment was a rare instance of just deserts. by David Gelernter ejoice not when thy L^ enemy falleth"—that is the Bible's advice (Proverbs 24:17), and...
...The Bible tells us not to rejoice over fallen enemies, and has another message also (Deut 16:20): "Justice, justice shalt thou pursue...
...But it isn't likely to...
...by David Gelernter ejoice not when thy L^ enemy falleth"—that is the Bible's advice (Proverbs 24:17), and the classical rabbinic tradition cites this verse in urging us never to celebrate the death of an enemy no matter how evil...
...Some of the foulest, highest-ranked criminals were tried at the Tokyo war crimes trial...
...An execution makes it impossible for the former strongman to rally his supporters and return to power— which is important to a struggling young democracy like Iraq...
...In the days following Saddam's execution we heard often about how the Iraqis (and by implication their American protectors) had botched it...
...Most important, the trial and punishment of a despot makes a loud-and-clear proclamation to the world: The strong may not terrorize the weak, not now and not ever...
...But Americans have plenty to celebrate in the trial and punishment of Saddam Hussein by his own nation, which America and her allies made possible...
...What do we gain in the end by trying a broken, humiliated dictator and then putting him to death or locking him away...
...Slobodan Milosevic died last year in his cell during his long-running trial by international tribunal for mass murder in the former Yugoslavia...
...plenty were not...
...Anyone with half a brain is aware that no nation in the world is more self-critical—more apt to investigate its own crimes and try its own actual criminals—than Israel, except for the United States...
...justice for the man who tore your universe apart can't repair the universe...
...He has since died...
...Justice wins occasionally...
...And countless small-fry torturers, gang rapists, and cold-blooded murderers were never tried at all...
...Saddam was taunted on the gallows, and his last moments were videotaped by witnesses who should not have been collecting souvenirs...
...His totalitarian grip on the Soviet Empire made it impossible for his terrorized people to rise against him...
...we make plain that it can and will be defeated in the end...
...a British royal commission once spelled it out...
...The bestial cruelty with which the Japanese army treated captive soldiers and whole Asian peoples in World War II will be a reproach to Japan forever...
...Idi Amin, butcher of Uganda, died four years ago in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia...
...In any case, those who criticize the manner of Saddam's execution invite the world to contemplate the David Gelernter is a national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard...
...Some were tried at Nuremberg...
...We comfort the survivors and the victims' families—but not much...
...Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge, who slaughtered perhaps three million Cambodians, died in the Cambodian jungle in 1998—admittedly under house arrest, but held by his own Khmer Rouge, not any national or international authority...
...we make it concrete...
...May the same thing happen to terrorist tyrants everywhere...
...The trial of Saddam was a triumph for one of the noblest of all causes: the sanctity of justice no matter how powerful the criminal, no matter how poor or powerless the victim...
...For a nation to pass sentence on its own deposed dictator is a rare event...
...The idea of Europe sitting in moral judgment on Israel would be funny, except that no joke can be amusing forever—and this one has been done to death...
...Perhaps Europe would consider composing a new joke...
...All things considered, the trial of Saddam Hussein was a moral bull's-eye in a field where bull's-eyes are rare...
...Those infractions of execution etiquette ought not to have been allowed, but don't kid yourself: No execution is ever pretty...
...But Himmler committed suicide before he was tried, Goebbels and Hitler himself before they were even captured...
...Hanging is "a peculiarly grim and derogatory form of execution, suitable for sordid criminals and crimes...
...He never ran the smallest risk of facing trial and died (in 1953) in his bed...
...But they see themselves as the only trustworthy judges...
...By pinning a criminal's crimes on his back, we give evil a local habitation and a name...
...Belgium defined the height of arrogance for all time in 2001, when the Belgian Prosecutor's Office tried to indict Israel's prime minister, Ariel Sharon, for war crimes...
...Some were executed...
...After the war, the French tried Philippe Petain and Pierre Laval, chief authors of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime...
...And in this squeamish, fastidious nation it is easy to forget the significance of a hanging...
...Mankind may never have another chance to put the devil himself in the dock...
...Some were tried...
...And we'll never know how much this failure has cost...
...Once again we will never know the cost to mankind of this failure of justice...
...Sixteen defendants were sentenced to life, seven to death...
...During a 1998 trip to London, the Chilean ex-dictator (who ran a brutal regime that also—inconveniently—turned the nation's economy around and made it the strongest and freest in South America) was placed under house arrest, on the orders of a Spanish judge...
...Georgios Papadopoulos, the most prominent, died of cancer in prison...
...How much dignity did his thug henchmen allow Iraqis who were about to be fed into industrial shredders or to have nails driven into their skulls...
...And doing justice accomplishes other things that are even more important...
...meanwhile, Russia coasts downhill towards a resurrected pseudo-Communist dictatorship...
...Today's Europeans seem enthusiastic about war crimes trials...
...A concerted, high-priority effort might perhaps have taken Hitler alive in the last weeks of the war, as Berlin disintegrated...
...Britain was unwilling to leave Augusto Pinochet to the justice of his own Chilean nation...
...Mao died in his bed...
...But the fates of leading Nazi gangsters were a mixed bag...
...The Greek colonels who ran a brutal regime during the late 1960s and early '70s were brought to trial after democracy was restored...
...But it never happened...
...Stalin was a mass murderer on Hitler's own scale...
...Eleven nations, Western and Asian, sent judges...
...ways in which the convict himself did the deed...
...Castro is on his way...
...Petain's sentence was commuted on account of age, and he died in prison...
...The mass-murderer Radovan Karadzic has evaded capture and is apparently a hero to (at least some) Bosnian Serbs...
...Execution with dignity" is virtually a contradiction in terms, but many believe that a noose and a swift broken neck were too good for a man who had murdered so many and created so much misery and agony in this sad, suffering world...
...Both were sentenced to death...
...That communism means Stalin as surely as Nazism means Hitler is a fact that (evidently) many people do not know...
...The last hundred years have seen many of the most vicious murderers the world has ever known...
...He was freed in 2000 after being pronounced too ill to stand trial...
Vol. 12 • January 2007 • No. 17
