Monday, December 15, 2003



Time to bring in the UN

I've been expecting to wake up one morning to learn that a major city has been blanketed in radioactive dust; instead, I woke up this morning to find that Saddam Hussein had been captured.

This is genuinely good news - he's a monster, and he deserves to face justice. But it's also time to bring in the UN, to ensure that the justice he faces is fair, open and transperant. Even Saddam has human rights, and if we are to punish people for human rights violations, we must ensure that we do not violate their rights in the process. Otherwise, we'd be sending a message of hypocrisy, and undermining the very thing we're claiming to protect.

Update: No, this does not mean trying Saddam in the Hague. It means using international expertise in the matter to both ensure that the process is fair, and lend credability to it. If the Americans organise a show trial for Saddam, they will be forever open to the claim that they were merely enacting "victor's justice". The Iraqi people deserve better than that.

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