Iraq's Victory

The execution of Saddam Hussein by a courageous Iraqi government will mark a turning point in at least some of the thinking about the war. For starters we won't have Los Angeles Times running another column from the angry left about how maybe our best option would be to restore Saddam Hussein to power. However absurd was such a suggestion being circulated by the Tribune Company, there were no doubt those in Iraq who were holding out for that precise hope. As long as Saddam lived he served as at least one incentive for the attacks that have been levied against the government and our own GIs. We would not be so naïve as to predict a sudden peace. But we have no doubt that Iraq, our coalition, and the world is well rid of the tyrant.

New Yorkers will have little sympathy for the caviling of The New York Times, which once reacted to the execution of Adolf Eichman by lecturing New Yorkers on America's history of racial discrimination. On Friday it issued an editorial complaining about the "rush" to hang the Iraqi. But there was no "rush," not in the eyes of millions of Iraqis who endured Saddam's tyranny, nor in the view of the Kurds whose countrymen died in the poison gas attacks he ordered (even if some had hoped there would be a trial for Anfal), nor in the view of the Jews in Israel who suffered under the intifada he helped finance, nor of American and allied troops who did much of the fighting that was required to bring Saddam to justice. On the contrary, the years leading up to this moment moved all too slowly.

Those for whom the wait seemed interminable can take satisfaction not only in the outcome but also in the fact that the trial of Saddam was an important step in the Iraqi lustration. We have favored just such a process of producing and confronting the evidence of what happened during the years of great crimes -- not only in Iraq but also in Eastern Europe under communism, in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, in Germany under the Nazis. In the case of the trial of Saddam, there was much mockery of the proceedings. Yet month after month, evidence was adduced of the tyrant's culpability in specific crimes. One could even argue that by focusing less on the broad picture and more on the specifics of one instance – in this case the killings Saddam ordered in revenge for an assassination attempt – the credibility of the lustration was enhanced.

It seems to be the fashion, at the moment, to draw from Iraq's travail that there is no hope for democracy and the rule of law in the Arab world. We may be in a minority at the moment, but it's not a view we share. We have no illusions about the difficulties of the war and the chaotic nature of the struggle in parts of Iraq. But we have not forgotten the astounding days during which Iraqis went to the polls to establish their government, returning by the millions with their fingers stained with purple ink. Neither are we discouraged by the insistence that the situation has degenerated into civil war. Our own country endured a civil war, as other democracies have, only to emerge with a deeper appreciation for the cost, and therefore the value, of the democracy that survived – a prospect that is greater today in Iraq because Saddam has gone to his grave.