Richard Cohen’s column today sets the Saddam Hussein trial — which has been part comedy and part tragedy — in context. What he finds is that it is a near-perfect stand-in for the war.
So we are stuck with a trial that has become a microcosm of the way the Bush administration planned and executed the war itself. On most days, it has been a sputtering charade, which somehow has managed not to highlight the many crimes of Saddam Hussein but to obscure them.
Where his argument fails, however, is in raising a comparison with Darfur. Hussein was a brutal dictator, perhaps more brutal than Iran or Syria, but no more than some others. The moral component to the original invasion made by some liberal interventionists ignored the very real ethical issues — that piggybacking on the morally bankrupt Bush arguments ultimately fouls the entire operation.
The Iraq intervention was never a humanitarian crusade. There always was another dimension, an imperialist element that was paramount. Darfur — if the military option ever gets placed on the table — would be different. There is no American interest there and it would likely be accomplished with broadbased international support.
That’s something we can’t let go of.
Channel Surfing, The South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
Hank Kalet 