Justice for Iraq

Anne Applebaum:

Over the coming days and weeks -- throughout the appeals process, up to and including the day of the execution itself -- you are going to hear a lot about what went wrong with the trial of Saddam Hussein. You will be told, as an Amnesty International director put it , that the trial "has been a shabby affair, marred by serious flaws. . . . Every accused has a right to a fair trial, whatever the magnitude of the charge against him."

You will hear many denunciations of the verdict itself: The British Guardian newspaper called on Iraq to maintain a "principled opposition to the death penalty, to which there can be no exceptions. No European country now executes its criminals." You will also be told that the judges were incompetent, that the Iraqi government interfered constantly and that the international legal community loathed the trial from the start. All of this is true -- and all mostly irrelevant.

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The violence outside the courtroom also affected how the trial was perceived outside its walls. Televised testimony, which Iraqis initially found riveting, grew less relevant as the violence increased. The trial became nothing more than the background noise of the sectarian struggle: On Sunday, Shiites cheered the verdict while Sunnis denounced it. Imagine how different Hussein's death sentence would sound today if a stable, peaceful Iraq with a reformed judicial system were uniting to declare it, unanimously. Even the British media might then accept that, in such extraordinary cases, the Iraqis are allowed to choose penalties of which Europeans disapprove.

And yet, in the end there is only one standard by which the trial of Hussein and other Baathist leaders should be judged: Did it or did it not compile a true record of Hussein's crimes -- a record that in some distant, future, peaceful Iraq, will be available to help Iraqis understand what took place during Saddam Hussein's reign? Though it is unfashionable to write anything positive about Iraq right now, the answer is that it did. The crime for which Hussein was condemned -- the torture and execution of 148 people in the small town of Dujail more than two decades ago -- was well documented . Witnesses and archives were produced. Cross-examinations were held.

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While many complain that Iraq is no better off than it was under Saddam this trial shows what a difference there is in the country despite the violence. Many of the killings going on right now are by the same people that were killing on behalf of Saddam when he was in power. The big difference and it is huge is that now there is an opportunity for justice for the victims of these killings where before there was none.