The Innocence of Saddam

By Crispin Sartwell

 

The trial of Saddam Hussein has got me a bit befuddled.

    I always thought the distinction between imprisonment and kidnapping, between taxation and theft, between execution and murder, was that in each case the former was carried out by the agents of the government. In that case, genuine Saddam signatures - signatures, that is, of the president of Iraq - on orders of execution should be evidence not of guilt, but of impunity.

     If we go around holding government officials responsible for their actions, not only will they more or less all be subject to prosecution, but it will in principle be impossible to have a government at all.  Government could be defined precisely as a structure for relieving everyone involved of accountability.

     We all understand this, which is why, when a former dictator takes the stand, he invariably seems surprised to be there, and why he then proceeds to assert that he is still the president. If he were, of course, he'd be as innocent as a newborn babe. Innocenter. If nothing else, he could issue himself a pardon, but the question would never arise.

     Think for a minute what a consistent principle of holding people to account for their actions in office would entail. Let's say the state executed a supposed murderer, later exonerated by DNA evidence. Stranger things have happened. The judge who condemned him and the governor who signed the order should then be tried for murder.

    The mere innocence of the hundred some-odd people executed under Saddam's orders for an assassination attempt surely cannot be grounds to condemn him, unless it is grounds to condemn anyone responsible for the execution of the innocent.

     Let's say the president authorized the establishment of secret torture facilities around the world, in violation of the laws of his own country and of international law. If such an action would be grounds for prosecution, you'd see Saddam and Bush in parallel trials.

      In fact, there is no possible definition of crime for legal purposes that does not pre-exonerate the duly-authorized agents of the state.

     It's hard not to notice the beefy guys strutting around town in blue uniforms, with guns, clubs, tasers, and mace. If I tried that, they'd throw me in the clink.

   If they caught me lobbing white phosphorous incendiaries into your home town, they would prosecute me as a terrorist.

      The Bush administration has refused to participate in the International Criminal Court, which is intended to hold the former officials and agents of various countries responsible for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. The American government understands that it would be impossible to frame a definition of those charges on which it would not be committing such offenses on a daily basis.

      Indeed, it's going to be hard to make the International Criminal Court internally coherent, since the power it claims to punish will exonerate it precisely from the rules it purports to enforce.

     The functions of government, from routine police powers, to the powers of taxation, to the power to make war, all involve as explicitly as possible the violation of the laws that the officials doing the violating enforce on others. For such reasons among many others, the idea of the "rule of law" is profoundly confused.

     Of course, it is one thing for the government of an illegitimate dictator to start executing people, and quite another for a duly elected president. Still it is a bit disconcerting to think that, because you got a plurality of the votes, you're now free to kill and pillage the innocent. But you certainly are, insofar as you cannot be held to account.

      At any rate, John Roberts and Dick Cheney, the corner cop and the IRS agent, the prison guard and the major general, ought to be looking at Slobodan Milosevic and Charles Taylor and thinking to themselves: there, but for the grace of sheer power, go I.