THOMAS OLIPHANT
Issues of legitimacy on Saddam
WASHINGTON
The one-time Serbian crook, aggressor, and mass killer who is in his third year of histrionic defiance before a tribunal in The Hague is already said to be the model for the former Iraqi dictator's performance many months hence in his own trial for unspeakable crimes. Indeed, Saddam's performance last week seemed literally to foreshadow a show trial in which the defendant is the show. The comparison between two of the world's monsters of the 1980s and '90s is useful, but not for the superficial reason of personal conduct. The proceedings faced by Milosevic and Saddam are very different -- one inherently legitimate, the other facing an uphill climb to legitimacy. Those differences flow directly from the different ways the world's deadly serious quarrels with these beasts were resolved. Lest anyone forget, Milosevic is being tried before an international tribunal created by the United Nations. His boorish, maniacal behavior contrasts with the dignified perseverance of a determined group of international civil servants who have made what regular observers of the trial believe is a massive and overwhelmingly credible case of crimes against humanity that cost hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. His (one can pray) conviction will put some credibility back into the tattered, post-Holocaust vow of Never Again. Saddam will be tried in a forum that is technically Iraqi but with gigantic American footprints all over it. He will be tried under rules that have yet to be clearly formulated under American "guidance" on the basis of testimony and documents that have yet to be located, much less digested, and under laws whose applicability to his crimes is open to technical question. The transfer of "legal" custody of Saddam from the former occupation authority as a prisoner of war to the appointed, interim government of Iraq as a future criminal defendant was about as meaningful as the transfer of "sovereignty" earlier in the week. The distinction ought to mean something to more than just the international legal experts who worry about legitimacy. What is going to unfold in Baghdad is a direct and unfortunate consequence of the nature of the invasion that toppled Saddam and the mess of an occupation that followed. It could have been truly international under all manner of credible scenarios, as could the unavoidable occupation that followed. Instead of what one can hope will not turn out to be victor's justice or even revenge, Saddam could also be facing (and should have been facing) an international tribunal based on unassailable principles and provisions of international law in a proceeding that could have spoken credibly to the world. What has been unfolding in The Hague is just as clearly a consequence of the more intelligent and forward-looking process that toppled Milosevic. It is true that what we call the West waited unforgivably long to summon the will to stop his carnage in Bosnia and that the UN (because of Russia) could not act; but NATO could and finally did so with American leadership nine years ago. It is also true that the wait was painful as Milosevic tried to pull off another slaughter in Kosovo five years ago, but again NATO acted. The end of his genocidal aggression to create a Greater Serbia and the bombs that forced him to abandon Kosovo exposed Milosevic not only as a hideous criminal but also as a paper tiger; his lame effort to fix his reelection four years ago collapsed of its own light weight. The successor government in Serbia gave him up to international authority. The judgment that awaits him will not only be accepted internationally as just, it will be part of the never-ending struggle to establish parameters for acceptable conduct with some hope for legal retribution if they are exceeded. That outcome will be 100 times more difficult to achieve in Iraq. The decision to invade in a 90 percent American operation stopped a UN inspections operation that could have evolved into a kind of occupation without war. It is now clear that Saddam needed the impression that he might still possess unconventional weapons to help maintain his domestic position on top of a failed state. There were many ways he could have been toppled without the loss of nearly 1,000 American lives, five times as many injuries, and the expenditure of more than $150 billion. Instead, an American-dominated investigation and an American-arranged trial will give him a forum from which to shout venom at an America-hating Arab world. It did not have to be this way.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is oliphant@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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