Johann Hari has a very thoughtful and balanced column on complicity with the Saddam regime. The trial should be an opportunity for those governments who supported him to come clean:
The process of confessing our governments’ involvement in Iraq, although uncomfortable, could actually be a liberating experience for us too, because it would help us to remoralise our foreign policy. The images of the gassed Kurds at Halabja will damn the Reagan and Thatcher governments long after any strategic benefit they might have gained from supporting him is forgotten. Today, for similar strategic purposes, we offer support and weapons to butchers in Uzbekistan, Russia and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few. A process of confessing crimes against Iraq will help to identify our backing of criminals elsewhere – and make it politically harder to back fresh tyrants. This is, alas, one reason why an international investigation along these lines is extremely unlikely.
and also an opportunity for the “peace” movement to deal with its lack of moral clarity:
Speaking before the war, [Scott Ritter] told Time magazine: “The prison in question was inspected by my team in January 1998. It appeared to be a prison for children – toddlers up to pre-adolescents – whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually, I’m not going to describe what I saw there, because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I’m waging peace.”
That perfectly captures the moral obtuseness of the anti-war movement. At its heart was the grotesque idea that there could be “peace” for the Iraqi people with Saddam in charge. None of the opponents of the war were actually supporters of Saddam, save for a tiny Gallowayite fringe. But they all prioritised something else over the Iraqi people’s desire to be rid of him, whether it was their own reading of international law, their abhorrence of war, or their distaste for the foul right-wing administration in the White House.
As the anti-war protesters say, “no justice, no peace”, so let’s remove tyrants like Saddam one by one, and vow never to allow our governments to support such heinous fiends ever again.
Fat chance.