Josh Marshall has some pointed things to say about the trial and, it seems, moments-hence execution of Saddam Hussein. I think it deserves some consideration, so here is his post:
It’s a hornet’s nest. But I’m game. So why not jump in.
“Bush administration officials” are telling CNN that Saddam Hussein will be hanged this weekend. Convention dictates that we precede any discussion of this execution with the obligatory nod to Saddam’s treachery, bloodthirsty rule and tyranny. But enough of the cowardly chatter. This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation has been. Bush administration officials are the ones who leak the news about the time of the execution. One key reason we know Saddam’s about to be executed is that he’s about to be transferred from US to Iraqi custody, which tells you a lot. And, of course, the verdict in his trial gets timed to coincide with the US elections.
This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur — phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It’s a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.
Try to dress this up as an Iraqi trial and it doesn’t come close to cutting it — the Iraqis only take possession of him for the final act, sort of like the Church always left execution itself to the ‘secular arm’. Try pretending it’s a war crimes trial but it’s just more of the pretend mumbojumbo that makes this out to be World War IX or whatever number it is they’re up to now.
The Iraq War has been many things, but for its prime promoters and cheerleaders and now-dwindling body of defenders, the war and all its ideological and literary trappings have always been an exercise in moral-historical dress-up for a crew of folks whose times aren’t grand enough to live up to their own self-regard and whose imaginations are great enough to make up the difference. This is just more play-acting.
These jokers are being dragged kicking and screaming to the realization that the whole thing’s a mess and that they’re going to be remembered for it — defined by it — for decades and centuries. But before we go, we can hang Saddam. Quite a bit of this was about the president’s issues with his dad and the hang-ups he had about finishing Saddam off — so before we go, we can hang the guy as some big cosmic ‘So There!’
Marx might say that this was not tragedy but farce. But I think we need to get way beyond options one and two even to get close to this one — claptrap justice meted out to the former dictator in some puffed-up act of self-justification as the country itself collapses in the hands of the occupying army.
Marty Peretz, with some sort of projection, calls any attempt to rain on this parade “prissy and finicky.” Myself, I just find it embarrassing. This is what we’re reduced to, what the president has reduced us to. This is the best we can do. Hang Saddam Hussein because there’s nothing else this president can get right.
What do you figure this farce will look like 10, 30 or 50 years down the road? A signal of American power or weakness?
Rhetorical question, sure, but I’d say weakness. But all of us are responsible for this. It really doesn’t matter if you are a democrat or republican or libertarian or green or anarchist: this is our military; this is our president; this is our government, whether we like it or not. And we’ll bear the responsibility–for our mess in Iraq, for our new policy of handling (and torturing) detainees and our fudging of Geneva protections, and for failing to pursue a genuine strategy to neutralize a radical Islamist threat through engagement and smart military application–for generations.
Interesting commentary, however very one sided. I think there is little doubt that the post invasion phase in Iraq has been difficult, perhaps some sizeable mistakes, but the idea of removing Saddam and the threats he posed, was the right thing to do and probably overdue, difficult realities or not. Since even narcissist Joe Wilson himself agreed on national TV days before the March 2003 invasion, that Saddam had chem and bio WMD (the only major uncertainty was how close he was or wasn’t to nuclear), although to Wilson, Saddam having WMD was reason NOT to invade, what other responsible alternative was there? Months more of the deception/cat and mouse charade with the UN inspectors? Billions more spent per year “containing” Saddam with troops stationed in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere around the gulf, enforcing the no fly zones, etc. with our troops in Khobar towers getting killed by Al Qaeda, with “containing” Saddam in essence prompting Osama and the Whabbis to declare war on the infidel with it’s presence in the Arabian peninsula?
What about the hundreds of tons of yellowcake uranium found in Tuwaitha, which ordinarily should render Joseph Wilson’s ridiculous grandstanding stunt irrelevent? What about Iraqi expertise in chemical weapons shared in Sudan, as well as with Al Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan? What about Saddam’s siphoning billions in the UN “oil for palaces” sham to fund Palestinian terrorists, bribe the French at the security council level? What about the terrorism training camp at Salman Pak near Baghdad, with a jetliner fuselage used to learn hijacking techniques, which former prime minister Allawi said post invasion Mukbharrat discovered documents list Mohammed Atta as having attended in June 2001?
Why were parts of prohibited Al Samoud missiles (for chemical weapons long distance attacks) known to be in Iraq pre invasion by specific indentification markers, found serendipitously post invasion in a junkyard in Amsterdam?
No doubt the issues in the region, as well as globally are very complex and difficult, and I don’t doubt that the post invasion/occupation phase probably could and should have been better thought out and managed.
HOWEVER, the notion that Saddam wasn’t a threat, the whole thing a “clear mistake”, etc. is itself borne of convenient revisionism, conveniently “cherry picking” certain details, and ignoring or quickly forgetting major factual data. It’s almost amazing how widespread this has become, clearly for political ends (i.e. “Hate Bush” terminal myopia).
Would you mind explainig exactly what a “genuine strategy” involving “engagement” and a “smart military strategy” means? Sounds very thoughtful and glib, but means what as for specifics? If you’ll forgive me for the comparison, this kind of glib speech (very common lately)reminds me a lot of Mr. Kimble on the old TV show “Green Acres”, who always presented some very nicely worded comments, that nevertheless added up to saying exactly nothing!
Well, just a few things:
1) Thanks for your comment. Refreshing, actually, that you’ve come by for something other other Nooma critique.
2) The threat Saddam posed is widely recognized today to be far less than was hyped then. The debate about then is far less relevant to me than now, but for the most part I think that with hindsight we see that intelligence was exaggerated, that voices of caution were suppressed, that claims of substantially dangerous wmd were hyped. Should our attention after 9/11 have been Iraq? No. There was at the time little if any al quida link there; the roots of radical islamist discontent were simmering elsewhere, and rogue states and enemies of the US who perhaps wanted to assist those radicals were numerous. It was poor strategy to go after Saddam as we did, the way we did it, the way we are now doing it: and your apologia for it doesn’t make it much different.
Yes: billions spent “containing” Saddam, along with billions spent more towards the diplomatic front with Afghanistan, the support of moderate Islamic governments/groups around the world, the engagement with Islamic culture, the far greater application of both military force and reconstructive effort in Afghanistan, would have been better. But, again, that’s not the point: we can’t go back, can we?
However, something like that is what we need to be doing even today, but the problem is complicated by the mess in Iraq, not just the fermentation there of potential new terrorists, but the way our moral voice has been tarnished. Just one example: how do we convince the Muslim man/woman on the street to support the best America and the west stand for when we perpetrate Abu Ghraib, when we weaken torture standards for Muslims (and others) in our custody, when we fail to restore electricity or build roads or end corruption in the oil ministry of Iraq? When we don’t follow through with promises to make life better in Afghanistan?
Some of that failure happened despite our best efforts. Much of that failure is policy driven. All of it, and this was my point (as opposed to Marshall’s take), is our collective responsibility.
I don’t know how we possibly get that back anytime soon. And that, to me, is the scariest thing about this whole fiasco.
How we get there from the mess we’ve created, well, is beyond my ability to see. Instead, we’ve created the conditions for a civil-war in Iraq and a terrorist breeding ground that is indeed linked to radical Islam.
3) I find this humorous:
HOWEVER, the notion that Saddam wasn’t a threat, the whole thing a “clear mistake”, etc. is itself borne of convenient revisionism, conveniently “cherry picking” certain details, and ignoring or quickly forgetting major factual data. It’s almost amazing how widespread this has become, clearly for political ends (i.e. “Hate Bush” terminal myopia)
Why humorous? Well, because beyond the fact that your arguing style really isn’t much more than successive and unsubstantiated straw man attacks (e.g. nothing in my post or my blog said that anything was a “clear mistake,” nothing here is driven by “Hate Bush” terminal myopia), which is an interesting trend in both this and the Rob Bell post, the fact of the matter remains that you missed the entire point of Marshall’s commentary: the trial and execution of Saddam has been a farce that will negatively define the Bush administration for generations.
Beyond what one believes now, or what one held then, about the justification for entering the Iraq war, it is the case that its prosecution has been incompetent (and in some cases motivated more by American politics than by the exigencies on the ground–the example cited of the trial-verdict date is a good one). The trial and execution of Saddam is the icing on the cake.
Finally:
4) If you have issues with Marshall’s analysis, please take it up with him. I regularly post things that I think deserve consideration, but I don’t feel any need or plan to defend his take; just my response/critique/defense of it, should I offer any.