Word: saddams
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unusual thing happened last week. A man who had brutalized and terrorized his nation for a quarter-century was brought to justice. Saddam Hussein's trial and execution were imperfect. But the critics of the trial can't have it both ways. First, many of them told us that we couldn't expect Iraq to be a Jeffersonian democracy. Now they feign outrage that Saddam's trial didn't live up to Jeffersonian standards. Of course the trial was imperfect--but compared to what? The summary judgments accorded by their countrymen to Mussolini in 1945 and Ceausescu...
...America waits for President Bush to announce a new plan for Iraq, the brutal spectacle of Saddam Hussein's execution, recorded on cell phone video and seen around the Middle East, has drawn condemnation from around the world, including Washington. But Saddam's final moments highlight a much more serious and fundamental problem facing the Administration: The U.S. no longer has any control over the Iraqi political process...
...Having created a new state in Iraq - and not yet ready to admit that it is a failed state - the U.S. felt obliged to hand Saddam Hussein over to the Iraqis to administer the death penalty, even though Washington made clear it would have preferred that Saddam's sentence be administered at a less fraught moment - and in a less rushed manner. But being the ones to kill Saddam was a political prize for at least a section of the current government - the ultimate gesture of vengeance on behalf of the long-suffering Shi'ite majority, clearly calculated to boost...
...surprise that the Iraqi government wasn't inclined to follow a U.S. script in dispatching Saddam, because it hasn't been inclined to follow a U.S. script on the fundamental questions of national unity - reconciling with the Sunnis, making concessions to the insurgents to draw former Baathists back into the fold, and most importantly, reining in the Shi'ite death squads. Nor is this problem a unique failing of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki - who, in an interview in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday made clear that he no longer wants the job. The U.S. had no greater...
...Baghdad, it's widely agreed that the essence of the problem is political rather than military - unless Iraq's factions, including the government, are willing to reach a new accord, no amount of U.S. troops will be able to put Iraq back together. And the macabre political theater of Saddam's hanging was a reminder that no matter how many divisions it has in Baghdad, what the U.S. appears to lack is an Iraqi partner...