Whose Judgment Day?

So, surprise, surprise, it has come to pass: Saddam has been found guilty and sentenced to death, all in time for the US elections. At least they caught him, unlike Osama, who seems to elude our disinterested, Dear Leader. Perhaps we should start looking ahead to the next trial for crimes against humanity, for starting a war of aggression, for committing mass murder over several years, for violating international laws governing armies of occupation, for illegally changing a country's laws and all for the benefit of a slice of international capital. Perhaps we should prepare ourselves for the trials of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Bremer, and the Joint Chiefs. Unlike Dear Leader's treatment of those he considers his enemies, we shouldn't deny Bush and his henchmen their day in court.

In the days of Nuremberg both high and low officials were subject to arrest and trial for war crimes and I suspect we could certainly justify doing it again. The question is how extensive our sense of justice should be. If reports of torturing suspects are true why not arrest those soldiers and CIA agents? If they did these things in "normal" life in the US we'd lock them up and if they ever got out of jail we'd want notification, just as now we want to know about sexual predators released into our communities. For all the BS folderol about national security and protecting the American people, torturers are pathological criminals and none of us would want to live near any of them. And the masterminds of murder and torture, the Generals and "high" administration officials are a clear and present danger to our communities and they should be dealt with appropriately.

Lots of people think "our" President deserves respect and deference but we should recall that he is on the public payroll: he's our employee. His war of aggression and his treatment of 2, count 'em, 2 occupied countries disgraces and shames us, half a million or more violent deaths in Iraq since we "liberated" it. However the next Congress is configured, if they want to display concern for humanity, respect for law, and care for their constituency, they will need to take matters into hand and rein in the regime, cut off its coup of democratic government and bring the criminals to account. Better for us to mete out justice ourselves than to wait for a couple billion of the world's dispossessed to rise up against us and do it themselves. The world at large would have trouble distinguishing between honorable, oppositional Americans and the criminal regime itself. On their own, they might wish, and try, to wipe out all of us. They might use our own words against us, claiming they had to destroy America to save it.