Putting terrorists and dictators on trial for “criminal acts” is crazy, says John Derbyshire: Whose Justice?

Colleagues that I have discussed this with come up with the following as, it seems to me, the best argument for hauling Saddam before a judge: “The alternative would have been to just put him up against a wall and shoot him as soon as he’d been found and identified. But then, Iraqis would have said: ‘Oh, these Americans are just like all the rest of the gangsters we’ve endured this past 50 years — they get the better of the other guy by force, then whack him.’ By going through a formal legal procedure, we’re showing that this is a truly new order, unlike what went before. It’s a declaration that this will now be a country of laws, not of men.”

I doubt, in fact, that this argument would be taken seriously by many Iraqis. The bogus nature of the proceedings, whose verdict is known in advance, make this a very poor advertisement for the rule of law. Furthermore, given that the new government was installed by an invading and occupying force — bound to be resented by any populace under any circumstances — and that the court is an instrument of that government, and that Saddam is thumbing his nose at it, the net effect of the trial will probably be to increase public sympathy for Saddam and reduce the government’s credibility and authority, just as it was in the case of Charles I.

My own belief is that putting Saddam up against a wall and shooting him within hours of his apprehension would have been exactly the right thing to do, and would have saved both us and the Iraqis much embarrassment and many unnecessary and undesirable complications. The street vendor I buy my coffee from on my way to National Review editorial meetings is a native of Romania, where he tells me things are now looking up, with hopes of an eventual entry into the European Union. Yet the up-against-a-wall approach was precisely the one taken by the Romanians towards their last dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, when they overthrew him in 1989. Are there any Romanians who regret this? Or who feel that their new constitution is less legitimate because of it? I doubt it.

We have lost our chance to do the right thing with Saddam Hussein, but there is still Osama bin Laden to dispose of. I very much hope that when that rat is cornered, subsequent events will follow the admirable and correct Romanian model, not the absurd Yugoslav/Iraqi one. I don’t want my country’s enemies “brought to justice.” I want them killed.