Eye On America | Saddam Hussein’s sentence not completely beneficial

Ross Weingarten Opinions Editor

On Sunday, Nov. 5, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by hanging by an Iraqi court. President Bush and members of his administration lauded the event as a huge step towards the democratization of Iraq, and as proof that there is a judiciary that is independent of political and social pressures.

I agree that the sentence has important, positive implications. Hussein was a cruel, authoritarian leader who used force and oppression to achieve his goals.
The incident for which he was tried, the 1982 massacre in a Shiite town (which was pre-empted by his attempted assassination), was a travesty, and he deserves to be punished for orchestrating it.

Furthermore, the verdict is a big step in the right direction with regard to recent prosecutions of leaders for war crimes. In the near future, a number of ex-dictators such as Charles Taylor of Liberia will be prosecuted in international courts for their roles in organizing and executing horrible crimes. These trials are complicated affairs, and often, guilt is impossible to prove. Hussein’s verdict proves that the best way to try leaders with the blood of innumerable victims on their hands is to focus on a specific incident. The prosecution limited Hussein’s charges to one massacre, and they were able to get sufficient evidence that the autocratic leader murdered hundreds. Indicting men like Hussein and Taylor with general crimes such as genocide, as the International Court of Justice did with former Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic, will not work because because they are too broad to prove concretely.

However, the consequences of Hussein’s sentence are not all positive. There are two issues stemming from the result that will end up hurting Iraq’s push for democracy and America’s international reputation. First, while Shiites and Kurds, long-tormented and repressed under Hussein, celebrated the verdict. Sunnis, on the other hand, the sect of Islam to which Hussein belonged, were horrified. In the first days after the verdict was announced, there have been protests in Iraq by Sunni Muslims that still hold allegiance to Hussein. As the country teeters on the brink of civil war, will the fate of the former dictator be enough to push Sunnis and Shiites over the edge and into an all-out conflict?

The second issue is the use of the death penalty. While the United States has been steadfast in its commitment to capital punishment, most western countries have banned the practice. That the U.S. continues to utilize the death penalty is a black mark on our reputation, and many European countries have already expressed displeasure over Hussein’s fatal sentence, saying that no matter how horrible his crimes were, he does not deserve to die.

While it was not an American court that prosecuted Hussein, the use of capital punishment will inevitably be tied to our legal system. Even if the United States had nothing to do with the verdict, which I believe to be true, international perception will link Hussein’s execution with American politics. There are a number of countries, including most of Western Europe, that wish to see capital punishment made a thing of the past worldwide. It is not a certainty that Hussein will be executed, as the case automatically goes to a trial of appeals to review the sentence, but the use of capital punishment in such a high-profile case will almost certainly hurt Iraq’s reputation as an emerging, modern democracy. And at this point, the reputations of Iraq and America are inexorably linked.

So how should we view the official end of Hussein’s reign in Iraq? It is imperative that Iraqi citizens, as well as people around the world, see that the former dictator is punished for his crimes. Hussein ruled Iraq with an iron fist, using coercion and secrecy to fulfill his agenda. However, executing him will not only draw the wrath of nations that are against capital punishment, but it will also widen the divide between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. The country is extremely fragile, and every measure should be taken to maintain whatever balance remains. Hussein should spend the rest of his life behind bars, a symbol that his reign of terror is over, but sending him to the gallows will prove counter-productive.