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opinion
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This past Memorial Day... This past Memorial Day in Iraq, at least 54 human beings lost their lives in the fighting, some three years after George W. Bush played warrior hero on the aircraft carrier and declared the war over. Also in Iraq this past Memorial Day, the trial of Saddam Hussein continued. It's a foregone conclusion --- he'll be found guilty, he'll be condemned to die and he'll be executed. There will be a certain rough justice in that, but it will also be an ugly precedent and a sign that the cause of freedom is not well in the emerging new Iraq. The erstwhile tyrant's lawyers complained that the court was excluding certain witnesses, but it appears that the proffered testimony was not from those who had direct personal knowledge of the facts. Under Islam's Sharia Law, as is also the case with the Anglo-American Common Law and the Civil Code system that derives from Napoleonic and Roman law, a person who does not personally possess direct knowledge of a relevant fact is not really a "witness," and his or her testimony is properly excluded. And in this case, after the defense had raised the argument that the 1982 torture and execution of 148 people in the Shiite town of Dujail was justified, even required, because the alleged rebels had supported an assassination attempt against Saddam Hussein, a defense witness claimed that 23 of the victims of that crackdown were still alive. On closer examination, he could only name six, and some of those names were not among those whom the former Iraqi regime's documents said were executed. Take it in the best light for the defendants, and still you have 125 counts of aggravated murder, if it was that. It appears that it was. What of Saddam's justification claim? If you go armed into a bank and rob it, and an armed security guard tries to employ deadly force to stop you and you shoot and kill the guard, do you have a valid case of self-defense? Hardly. While committing your crime you have forfeited the right to defend against deadly force. Should it be any different when someone shoots his way into power, organizes a dictatorship and consolidates his hold on a country through bloody purges, sets up a tiny fringe of a minority section of the population as the pompous ruling elite, starts a foreign war that costs millions of lives, and then finds himself the target of members of the oppressed majority who want to kill him? Only the precept "might makes right" upheld Saddam's supposed right (or duty) to defend himself and his regime back then, but the force isn't with him now. Arguments about provocation and justification accrue to the benefit of those whom he ordered massacred, not Saddam Hussein. But all that said, the trial is a terrible disaster for the emerging Iraqi government. Already, two defense lawyers have been assassinated. On Memorial Day one of the surviving attorneys for the defense pointed out a member of a Shiite militia in the audience and the presiding judge threw the man out of the courtroom. It was a very mild response to a continued attack on the due process of law. The precedent of trials where defense attorneys work under threat of death is a portent of kangaroo courts to come. This past Memorial Day in the USA, Congressman John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and a retired Marine Corps officer, grieved over revelations of an atrocity by Marines who killed 24 unarmed civilians, including small children, in the Iraqi town of Haditha. On the Good Morning America television show he said that America had lost the support and respect of the Iraqi people. He said that "when we went in, they thought it was wonderful to topple Saddam Hussein. Now we've lost that war, and now it is time to redeploy." Murtha used to be a hawk, but the man has enough common sense and professional judgment to recognize a disaster when he sees it. Like many Americans who served in and love the US Armed Forces, he understands the terrible damage that has been caused by sending in troops without a realistic plan, without proper equipment and in insufficient numbers to accomplish their mission. Congressman Murtha has become the voice in Congress for that part of the officer corps which is fed up with the intimidation of those who give sound professional advice. Time and again the Bush administration's neoconservative ideologues have insinuated that officers who give honest opinions are traitors for harboring their concerns, but now the realities on the ground in Iraq have proven their misgivings to be well founded. Murtha is also one of the increasing group of veterans who recognize that the Bush administration's policy of using torture is both ineffective for the purpose of gathering information and cruel to American GIs, some of whom will inevitably pay the reciprocal price by themselves being tortured. This past Memorial Day, George W. Bush signed the "Respect for America's Fallen Heroes Act." It prohibits protests in or within 300 feet of a national cemetery. The law is probably an unconstitutional infringement of First Amendment rights to freedom of expression, even though, like flag burning, taking an antiwar protest to a cemetery is an incredibly obnoxious act. But because the law would allow pro-war expressions of opinion at national cemeteries --- like Bush's speech at Arlington right after he signed the bill --- it's not a content-neutral and well reasoned restriction on the time, place or manner of exercising free speech and for that reason it's likely that even conservative judges will strike it down. However, Bush figures that many Americans are ignorant of the Constitution they profess to worship. He's also counting on many Americans to mistake the identity of the tiny fringe group that's actually going around protesting at military funerals. Is Dubya lashing out at the antiwar movement? That's what people who only read the headlines and furthermore stereotype the majority of Americans who oppose the Iraq War might believe. Surely Karl Rove's focus groups have indicated this misperception. Actually, however, the people disrupting funerals for fallen soldiers are members of this purportedly Baptist nut group who believe that God is angry at the United States for being too tolerant of homosexuality and is expressing His displeasure by killing off American soldiers. Bush is still president today because in 2004 the likes of Karl Rove and Ralph Reed put ballot initiatives to ban homosexual marriages before the voters of 11 states, and the increased turnout by religious homophobes in those states was the GOP margin of victory. These same people plan to do a similar thing this year by putting laws against flag burning on the ballot in many places. Will they morph Murtha's image into that of Osama bin Laden? Will they denigrate his military record, like they trashed John McCain's in the 2000 South Carolina primary? Will they call the Iraq Veterans Against the War a bunch of queers? Will they pretend that it's the antiwar movement --- and not their own anti-gay movement --- who's behaving badly at the hallowed grounds where those who gave their lives in service to their country are buried? Will they act as if the Democrats, rather than they themselves, outed a CIA agent for petty political revenge? Yeah, they'll probably do all of that. But what they forgot on Memorial Day is that an awful lot of Americans remember things that won't work in Republicans' favor come Election Day.
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