Saddam Hussein is guilty of crimes against humanity. He’s killed thousands of his own people. His trial may have been less fair than we would like, but I hav e no trouble with the guilty verdict. As for the death penalty, I oppose it, but Iraqi law is not my specialty, and if their constitution and Justice system permits that penalty, so be it. They are, as we have been told many times, a sovereign government, so the least we can do is allow them to employ any penalty permitted by their laws.
However, no criminal of Saddam’s stature commits his crimes alone. He has henchmen, sycophants, hangers-on and thugs to carry out his directives. And dictators who oppress and murder their own people in violation of international law often do so with the active assistance of foreign officials who provide these monsters access to the very weaponry and materials used to commit their horrid crimes.
Case in point? Donald Rumsfeld:
Five years before Saddam Hussein’s now infamous 1988 gassing of the Kurds, a key meeting took place in Baghdad that would play a significant role in forging close ties between Saddam Hussein and Washington. It happened at a time when Saddam was first alleged to have used chemical weapons. The meeting in late December 1983 paved the way for an official restoration of relations between Iraq and the US, which had been severed since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. […]
That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld. […]
Throughout the period that Rumsfeld was Reagan’s Middle East envoy, Iraq was frantically purchasing hardware from American firms, empowered by the White House to sell. The buying frenzy began immediately after Iraq was removed from the list of alleged sponsors of terrorism in 1982. According to a February 13, 1991 Los Angeles Times article:
“First on Hussein’s shopping list was helicopters — he bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice. However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell “Huey” helicopters, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam, prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983… Nonetheless, the sale was approved.”
In 1984, according to The LA Times, the State Department—in the name of “increased American penetration of the extremely competitive civilian aircraft market”—pushed through the sale of 45 Bell 214ST helicopters to Iraq. The helicopters, worth some $200 million, were originally designed for military purposes. The New York Times later reported that Saddam “transferred many, if not all [of these helicopters] to his military.”
In 1988, Saddam’s forces attacked Kurdish civilians with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes. U.S. intelligence sources told The LA Times in 1991, they “believe that the American-built helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.”
Now, as I previously stated, I am no expert in Iraqi law, but it seems to me that Mr. Rumsfeld and other former officials of the Reagan administration, with full knowledge of Saddam’s murderous and thuggish tendencies, enabled him to purchase the very chemicals and helicopters that he would later use to massacre the Kurds living in Northern Iraq. Under the principles of American criminal law, they would be guilty, at the very least of negligent homicide when they allowed Saddam to acquire these weapons with full knowledge that he had previously massacred his own citizens.
Indeed, if I was a prosecutor I would be very tempted to charge Rumsfeld with first degree murder because he and his colleagues in the Reagan administration acted with a reckless and depraved indifference to human life when he enabled Saddam Hussein’s regime to acquire the means to make and deploy chemical and other weapons to be used against innocent human beings. After all, Rumsfeld and other US officials had knowledge of Saddam’s past slaughters of his own people, and yet they went ahead and allowed him to obtain advanced weapons of mass destruction. It seems likely to me that Iraqi law has provisions analogous to US law which would make aiding and abetting Saddam’s criminal enterprise actionable.
I will shed no tears when Saddam Hussein dies, whether today, tomorrow and some unknown date in the future. But he should not be the only person who merits punishment for the crimes committed in his name. If the Iraqi government truly is a sovereign and independent regime which represents the will of the Iraqi people I pray that its legal system will file indictments and requests for extradition for Donald Rumsfeld and all other Americans who acted to aid and abet the crimes for which Saddam has been convicted.
Justice, whether in America or Iraq, should be blind to bias and prejudice against defendants charged with criminal acts, but neither it should not remain purposely ignorant of those who through their actions permitted such crimes to be committed in the first place. A man who fires the gun which kills another is a murderer, but so is the man who gives him that gun with full knowledge that his is likely to use it to commit murder. Donald Rumsfeld, and all those who enabled Saddam back in the 1980’s to kill his own people should face the same legal process in Iraq that the now deposed and disgraced dictator was made to face.
And may God have mercy on their souls should they be found guilty for the actions they took which made those horrible massacres possible.
