Acorn

Saddam Hussein is going to die. He will be hanged in a matter of months in spite of his built-in appeal, along with two of his co-defendants. No one was surprised by this verdict, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to swallow.

How can anyone put a man on trial for killing and then kill him in turn? Their moral high ground sinks practically below sea level. Yes, I understand that he didn't just kill one person. Hussein committed atrocities that are on par with Hitler. But when did we decide we wanted to behave in kind?

As far as I'm concerned, the taking of any life is wrong and there is no justification for it. We have no right to choose who deserves to live or die, regardless of what that person has done.

Yet, while I strongly believe that, I am also not naive enough to think that Hussein would be left alive. News reports are bringing back more and more accounts of the travesties occurring in Iraq. The Iraqi death toll is estimated at 665,000 people as a result of the overthrow. Shiite and Sunni militias are an ever-increasing threat to the general population, as well as a serious threat to the U.S. and U.K. troops. Nothing is stable or secure there.

The execution of Saddam Hussein will hopefully lead to a lull in hostilities. Unfortunately, before this lull, there is going to be a serious uproar. Sunni militias have already killed an estimated 71 people in spite of the curfew put in place in Sunni-dominant areas, such as Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. Since the sentence was announced, there have been groups in the streets both extolling and admonishing the sentence. Shiites and other victims of Hussein's Baath party cheered and handed out candy, while mainly Sunnis and those still faithful to Hussein held pictures of their former leader in one hand with their AK 47s in the other. For lack of better words, shit is going down in Iraq, and hell is going to break loose even more so than it already has.

In spite of all of this, leaders are still hoping that there will be a calm following the anticipated chaos. One has to wonder though. If this was their real aim all along, to finally put to rest the travesties of the past, could they have gone about it in a worse way?

Hussein's reaction to his sentence was, "Long live the people! Long live the nation! Down with the occupiers! Down with the spies!" With incendiary statements like this, are we supposed to believe that trying Hussein in Iraq has made it a more secure place for either Iraqis or foreign troops?

Deciding to hold Hussein's trial in Iraq was meant to empower the Iraqi people, especially the previously oppressed Shiite majority, or at least that was the rhetoric we were given. In reality, however, it turned the trial into a ridiculous production where defense attorneys were the victims of successful and attempted assassinations, and some of the judges received constant death threats. In the United States, we have laws that allow trials to be moved if the original trial location is overwhelmingly biased. Now imagine if it that tainted location was an entire country.

Hussein should have been tried in The Hague by the international community. This was not a simple internal revolution. Apparently, Hussein was such a threat, it demanded the aid of the United States and the United Kingdom plus their grab bag group of supporting countries. If Hussein's actions were severe enough to justify international intervention, they were great enough to justify international judgment.

Instead, what we are left with is a death sentence handed down by those most biased against him, and while I'm not saying he is innocent, that's simply not justice.

The point of living in a just society is that we have the same rules and rights for everyone, regardless of what they do. We presume everyone to be innocent until proven guilty because that is the only way to give real legitimacy to our criminal proceedings. I don't suppose anyone remembers the rhetoric we were given for going into Iraq in the first place, but I seem to recall it having something to do with human rights and a democratic society. It seems strange, then, that the United States would support such a shambles of a trial as the Hussein trial was.

All I can hope now is that after last Wednesday's liberal New Year, the U.S. troops will finally be pulled out of the region before any more Americans fall victim to this less-than-stable society.

Victoria Webbe is a sophomore and a political science and women's studies double major.

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