The Professionals Respond to Saddam, Part I

Two columns this morning on what to do with Saddam, one from the illustrious John Keegan of England, and another from George Will of the Washington Post:

Sayeth Keegan:

Though the security situation is simplified, however, the constitutional situation is not. How to dispose of a fallen dictator is a problem of immense complexity for victor states.

You would bring that up, wouldn't you? Nothing in life is simple, bah.

Sovereign states shrink from disposing peremptorily of sovereign rulers. The process, whichever is chosen, always threatens to set inconvenient precedents. Since 1648, when the Treaty of Westphalia created the principle that sovereign states, and therefore their sovereign heads, are both legally and morally absolute, there has been no legal basis for proceeding against such a person, however heinous the crimes he is known to have committed.

Bloody rot, these cursed precedents. However, insofar as I know, he's right. Civilization is so inconvenient at times.

Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito were all sovereign rulers, de jure as well as de facto. For another, there was no body of law under which they could be arraigned.

Another problem is that we have no use for Saddam. Mr. Keegan points out that America found a useful policy objective in retaining the Japanese emperor, whereas Hitler and Mussolini were dead before we got to them. Saddam does not have the benefit of the first case, and does not fit (although he may belong) in the second case.

None of these precedents seems likely to spare Saddam. He may, de facto, have been head of state but, by fleeing his capital and office at the outset of the last Gulf War, he effectively abandoned whatever constitutional status he enjoyed.

That's interesting. I didn't know that flight on the part of a national leadership abandons constitutional status. I would have thought prior to Mr. Keegan's remarks that the presumption of the custom would have been something to do with an exception for flight to evade capture in the event of hostilities, but go figure. Does that mean that President Davis abandoned his constitutional (supposing, I reckon, that you grant legitimacy to the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia) status when he fled the Confederate capital in the face of Grant's Army of the Potomac?

There may be some cultural thing of which I am not aware, that a leader is supposed to remain in the capital even if the invader's armies reach the capital, and the leader of the conquered state is supposed to acknowledge defeat, unfortunate reversal, etc. etc. and an end to the hostilities results. If anyone knows that, I'd appreciate the answer.

At present there is no death penalty in Iraq, but it seems possible that the Iraqi Governing Council will introduce one and Washington will undoubtedly wish to see Saddam dead. As he has brought death to so many innocents, it is a fate he unquestionably deserves.

That's pretty much the probable score. Keegan wants him dead, and I'm pretty certain that we'll see that at some point.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 09:02 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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