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Home Front: WoT
Saddam as Victim
2007-01-04
James Taranto, "Best of the Web"

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra Saunders notes a rather outrageous quote from a self-styled human-rights advocate, objecting to Saddam Hussein's execution:

Richard Dicker, director of Human Rights Watch's International Justice Program, said in a press statement, "The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders. History will judge these actions harshly."
What nonsense. The measure of a government's commitment should be in how it treats its citizens. Hussein had countless Iraqis killed without a trial. He ordered the death of an 11-year-old boy because he thought it was "the right of the head of state." History will focus on his misdeeds, not on the timely execution of a guilty despot.

Saunders is obviously right: It is perverse to consider the execution of a mass murderer as worse than the murder of children.

But she doesn't quite capture the full perversity of Dicker's statement, "The test of a government's commitment to human rights is measured by the way it treats its worst offenders." By this reasoning, hanging a thief or a jaywalker would be less bad than hanging a mass murderer.

And suppose we apply the Dicker principle to the previous regime in Baghdad. How did it treat Iraq's worst offenders, namely Saddam Hussein his sons and assorted hangers-on? It provided them with nearly limitless wealth and power. By Dicker's logic, this is close to ideal: The more brutal a dictatorship and the more lavishly its rulers live, the stronger its commitment to human rights. What a monstrous moral inversion.
Posted by:Mike

#4  Iff Secular Baathist Saddam + Islamist Fundamentalist Khomeini [now MadMoud of the Apocalypse + MMullahs] were all reportedly agz US-Western influence in the ME-World, including alleged US-led Global "War for Oil" + supporting or ISRAEL, then why the IRAN-IRAQ WAR, why didn't assist/collude wid each other during DESERT STORM = IRAQI FREEDOM??? Logically, Saddam as Anti-American would had been for the protection, but not necessarily for Iran-specific "power projection" of Radical Iran = Radicalism in the 1980's. WHy would Saddam be sarcastic at the mention of SADR = SHIA/IRAN by his execution guards???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2007-01-04 21:30  

#3  Kinda reminds me of Deborah Frisch attempting to be looked upon as a victim too.
These columnists really need to have a leash.

Hey and I liked how they didn't keep Saddam for years on a death row. We need to be more like that.
Posted by: Jan   2007-01-04 18:55  

#2  So San Fran dick is a dick. stfu dick^2
Posted by: USN, Ret.   2007-01-04 15:07  

#1  Well Mr. Dick Dicker, I kind of liked the way Saddam died, however I wish it was in HD.
Posted by: Spomort Greling4204   2007-01-04 07:42  

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