Saddam - The Aftermath

The capture of Saddam Hussein highlights an important point of agreement between pro-war supporters and anti-war activists. Both agree - for the most part - that the removal and capture of Saddam is a good thing for the world. It's high time the world united against tyrants, despots and dictators like Saddam, and hopefully the fall of his regime will be the first of many such changes in the world. Prime candidates waiting for long-overdue regime change include Burma, Mozambique and North Korea.

Bush, Blair and Howard now try to claim, with a typical twist of "revisionist history", that the fall of Saddam justifies the invasion of Iraq, whether or not WMDs are discovered. If that is so, will they now launch an invasion of Mozambique to topple Robert Mugabe? Will they send troops into Myanmar to confront the military junta that has imprisoned the people's elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, for two decades?

Of course not. They do not even exert serious political influence on these barbarians. The Iraqi invasion was, after all, about oil and political influence in the Middle East.

Tyrants are always tolerated by US administrations as long as they do not interfere with US economic interests. In fact, the US has often found it easier to deal with a malleable dictator than a fiesty and unpredictable democracy (witness Pinochet's Chile and the US-sponsored removal of Salvador Allende, or even last year's failed attempt to overthrow Venezuela's elected president, Hugo Chavez).

As Saddam's trial is likely to reveal, the worst of his crimes took place while he was being enthusiastically sponsored by the West.

The US encouraged Hussein to attack Iran in 1980 and start a war that would cost a million lives. Rumsfeld flew to Baghdad in December 1983, pledging continued US support in the Iranian war and negotiating a new oil pipeline across Iraq. Rumsfeld also carried a letter from the then Israeli prime minister, Itzak Shamir, offering to sell arms to a man whose capture Israel now regards as great news "for the democratic world and for the fight for freedom and justice".

We can expect Saddam's public trial to be televised extensively on CNN and we can expect it to hit our screens about the same time as the '04 Republican campaign adverts. We can expect his trial to be used to showcase the "new, democratic Iraq." And we can expect the US-appointed members of the Iraqi Governing Council to make the most of the photo opportunity for their own political ambitions.

But Saddam's trial may only add to Bush's problems for re-election in 2004. Aside from exposing the US complicity described above, it is also likely to highlight the lack of WMDs which were used to justify the invasion. If no WMDs are found, and if insurgents continue killing 5 US soldiers a week for the next year, the US public will be wondering what the USA is still doing there. And then what will Bush tell them?

Oh yeah, I nearly forgot - it's all about terrorism! Right?