Saddam's British sycophant MP suspended

British MP "Gorgeous" George Galloway will have an entire month off from work to wax nostalgic about his late bosom buddy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. That's because the British Parliament's Committee on Standards in Public Life is about to hand out a one month suspension to Galloway for "failing to properly declare his links" to a shell charity that funneled money from the United Nations "oil for food program" into Galloway's pockets. Under the scheme, the oil revenues were transfered to the transparently bogus charity devoted to ending sanctions on Iraq, before disappearing into Galloway's hands. One hand washed the other, turning sanctions busting into Mercedes Benzes and a swank luxury villa in Portugal for Galloway. Not bad for a poor boy from Dundee, eh?

The one month suspension is one of the harshest penalties to be handed out by the Parliamentary regulatory body, but Galloway isn't particularly worried. Perhaps he's waiting for someone to salute his "courage and indefatigability" while he's out?

Defending the indefensible

High profile Burmese democracy activist and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi just spent her 62nd birthday under house arrest - her 17th such year under detention. Over the past 17 years, I'm sure she's had ample time to consider the nature of her erstwhile friends in Western democracies that (at least ostensibly) champion her cause, as well as that of her jailers, the junta of generals led by Burma's de facto dictator Than Shwe.

Aung San Suu Kyi isn't the cause célèbre she was in the early 1990's, but if anything, political freedoms and human rights have gotten even worse since she won her Nobel Prize. So what gives? Who's got her back now? Frankly, who's got the back of dissidents in dictatorships who are paying the price of speaking out? Why are things getting worse in places like Burma, Sudan and Zimbabwe instead of better?

A large part of the problem is that dictators are never at a loss for enablers, both in Western governments and academia. For every US State Department press release denouncing conditions in a dictatorship, or university professor leading a candlelight vigil on the behalf of some dictator's unhappy subject, there are twice as many people urging "caution" and "moderation" towards dictatorial regimes. Why? For a number of ridiculous reasons.

The first is the hoary old realpolitik workhouse of stability. The theory goes that if the world puts heavy pressure on dictators, or worse, removes them altogether, the country will collapse into economic free fall or wanton violence without the strongman holding it all together. In fact, you could even call it the Saddam argument in light of what's going on in Iraq. You've probably even heard this argument from people you know: "Sure, Saddam was a bloodthirsty monster, but gee whiz, without him, those little brown people over there will just kill each other non-stop."

The problem with this argument is that the world's most destabilized places are already dictatorships. To go back to our first example, Burma is already rife with "destabilizing" violence in the form of endless ethnic civil wars, replete with attempts at ethnic cleansing, and innumerable narco-terrorist warlords both on the government and rebel sides. 80% of the world's present armed conflicts are instigated by and between autocratic regimes, and a nearly equal percentage of the planet's armed civil wars are taking place inside countries run by dictators. Preserving the dictatorship does not, has not, and will not restore "stability" to these regimes, precisely because dictators are the ones instigating the mayhem in the first place.

The second argument is that that dictatorships can be eased away from totalitarianism into the warm, fuzzy fold of liberal democracy. You've doubtlessly heard this argument before as applied to China. "Sure, China is a one-party dictatorship, but if they open up to the outside world, political reform is inevitable!" Supporters of this concept point to Spain and South Korea, former dictatorships that are now democracies. The problem with this argument is that it ignores the social and political factors that transformed Spain and South Korea into democracies, and ignores the fact that economic and political co-operation with the outside world didn't play much of a role in that transformation.

In fact, dictators are keener observers of the politics of appeasement than the allegedly enlightened politicians who pay lip service to their ouster. Has Kim Jong-Il suffered one iota for his nuclear gamesmanship? He squeezed fuel, food and countless concessions from the six party talks, and wound up obtaining nuclear weapons anyway. He remains in control of North Korea, and what's more, the sanctions slapped on North Korea after his deceit was revealed largely only hurt his already poor and malnourished populace, a group who Kim already regards with complete disinterest. Similarly, Western attempts for "constructive engagement" with Omar al-Bashir on Darfur are treated as signs of lunacy in Khartoum. Why, it's almost as if dictators think that the sight of powerful Western governments begging dictators pitiably to behave themselves is a sign of weakness.

They're right, of course. Most dictators do not operate in an isolationist vacuum, but their interests always do, and the overweening interest of any dictator is staying in power for as long as humanly possible without being murdered or deposed. Saddam Hussein prided himself for his ability to play the international appeasement game, both during the Iran-Iraq war, the aftermath of the first Gulf War, and during the weapons of mass destruction crisis that led to the laughable oil for food program. Saddam came away from each of these events as the winner, until he suddenly found himself on the gallows.

That, sadly, is the point where the game is up. Removing a dictator does not guarantee freedom or prosperity, this is true. However, leaving one in power guarantees the absence of both. We know this, so the question remains: why do we continue to defend, however weakly, the completely indefensible?

Au revoir, mon ami!

Has anyone else been following the election in France this past week? Well, even if you haven't been, it seems like half of the world's dictators have just lost one of their best friends: outgoing French President Jacques Chirac, who has highlighted a lengthy, some would say interminable, career in French politics, has apparently managed to become best friends with nearly every single dictator in Africa and the Middle East.

Chirac's friendship with the mercifully deceased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is legendary, of course, once gushing "you are my personal friend. Let me assure you of my esteem, consideration and bond" to the Butcher of Baghdad. Saddam, who apparently wasn't particularly looking for compliments, must have been somewhat baffled by his newfound Gallic admirer, but became fast friends with Chirac all the same. Especially since Chirac found no problem with selling nuclear technology to Iraq during Chirac's stint as French Prime Minister in 1975.

Did Jacques Chirac object to Saddam's unique stipulations that the nuclear technology transfer program "contain no persons of either the Jewish race or Mosaic religion" both on the Iraqi and French sides of the project? Mais non! Pas de problème, mon ami! Saddam eventually came to find his strangely obsequious ally very useful indeed, especially when the French adamantly opposed the war the eventually toppled him. He might have preferred French military support, but that's something of a sore topic with France.

Chirac stepped up his fawning relationship with world dictators when he became President of France, especially when the dictators in question ruled French speaking, or especially, former French colonies. Chirac not only bankrolled, but struck up personal friendships with some of the world's most notorious tyrants, such as Algerian dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika, autocrat Félix Houphouët-Boigny of Côte d'Ivoire, and Tunisian strongman Zine El Abdine Ben Ali. The more notorious the reputation, the greater Chirac's apparent eagerness to strike up a friendship.

Even Chirac's notorious hostility to the English language couldn't prevent Chirac from striking up a personal friendship with Zimbabwean dictator, and international pariah, Robert Mugabe. So consistent was Chirac's track record in maintaining friendship with the world's most repressive leaders, Mugabe could not help but feel offended when France later made a big show of possibly denying Mugabe permission to visit Paris. If it's any comfort to Robert Mugabe, Chirac's newfound reluctance came only after his former willingness to embrace Mugabe caused a scandal in the French press. Chirac finally found courage enough to ignore the feelings of the French public and extend a warm hand to the visiting dictator. Mugabe was right to take umbrage, however briefly justified. Since when had the scorn of the public stopped Jacques Chirac from cozying up to a dictator?

While some will grant that maintaining diplomatic relationships with dictatorships is an unavoidable necessity, is it really necessary to befriend the dictators themselves? Chirac saw no problem with this whatsoever.

UPDATE: President elect Nicolas Sarkozy vows to discard the French status quo with regards to coddling injustice in the name of "stability".

Checkmate.

Checkmate.

Saddam Hussein is dead at age 69.

"The Butcher of Baghdad" was hung before dawn, and will be buried next to his late, odious sons Uday and Qusay near Tikrit.

Obviously, it's difficult to think of a more fitting end to a year of dictator news in 2006 than this. Goodbye, Saddam. Let's hope civilization never sees your ilk again.

UPDATE: Professional hangmen on a closed course. Don't try this at home.

Saddam could hang before 2007

CNN is reporting that former Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein could possibly hang within the next 48 hours less than a week after the final appeal of the former strongman's death penalty sentence failed on Tuesday.

Saddam, whose name means "he who confronts" has crafted an image of himself as a survivor in the dictatorship business, where tenures are often short and fatal. Having survived the assassination attempt in Dujail that has now, ironically, sent him to a date with the hangman, Saddam styled himself as something of a daredevil, having courted disaster with a bloody war with Iran, and a disastrous incursion into Kuwait that saw his army cut to shreds, and nearly led to his ouster. No matter how long the odds were, or how powerful his enemies, Saddam took pride in hanging on as uncontested master of Iraq.

As they say, pride goeth before the fall, and this weekend, he could be falling a distance of about 8 or 9 feet. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: MSNBC is reporting that Saddam will hang this Sunday.

UPDATE!: It looks like tomorrow is the big day.

UPDATE!!: It looks like Saddam will be dead before midnight EST.

Saddam to hang within 30 days.

Saddam Hussein's desperate last ditch appeal to avoid the gallows has been rejected when Iraq's highest appeals court rejected Saddam's appeal, and confirmed that the former tyrant's death sentence must be carried out within one month. In an interesting twist, the hangmen have yet to be appointed, so the Iraqi government is offering up the position to the public. Given the countless families in Iraq devastated by Saddam's bloodthirsty police state, applications from would be volunteers have been pouring in, especially from Kurds and Shiites, two groups hit hardest by Baathist brutality.

The bleating from anti-death penalty advocates has begun, and naturally, few of them have experienced a fraction of the state sponsored horrors that were the norm (not even the aberration) of Saddam's Iraq. Iraq is not Belgium or Norway, but even the Belgians and Norwegians did not object when the Nazis who brutalized their countries, for a much shorter period of time, were marched on to the gallows. Iraq is looking to punish Saddam, not comfort flinchy European and American death penalty opponents, and in less than a month, the tyrant from Tikrit will be nothing more than a bloody smudge in the footnotes of history.

Lesson understood.

Now that the Butcher of Baghdad has been sentenced to hang, what have we learned?

I know it's a hoary question, but it's still a valid one. The European Union, fainting at the mere thought of violence, simply thinks it's wrong to execute anyone for any reason, as does Amnesty International. Opposition from these quarters was to be expected. After all, they tend to oppose the death penalty in more or less every instance, no matter who it is that's to be executed. No lessons learned here.

There have, however, been a few observers keen enough to learn one of the real lessons of Saddam's ignominious date with destiny. A group of Zimbabwean exiles in South Africa have welcomed Saddam's death sentence, and hopes it sends a message to Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe, as well as deposed dictators Augusto Pinochet of Chile and former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor, saying:

"[we] believe that together with the Pinochet, Taylor, and other recent cases, this case sends an unequivocally clear and resounding message to dictators and perpetrators of serious crimes under international and national laws. [We] hope that this loud message will not escape the ears of tyrants like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and all those who serve under him in the commission of torture and other crimes against humanity"

While stating that they "deplore the death penalty as a method of punishment", they welcome the trend of dictators facing justice at the hands of their former subjects in a court of law. As you can imagine, this trial has resonated strongly in countries who have recently rid themselves of their dictators, but less surprisingly, it's created quite an impression on another group: dictators still in power.

Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak is nervously talking about about the "instability" that Saddam's hanging will cause in Iraq, while Venezuelan caudillo Hugo Chavez predictably opposes Saddam's date with the gallows (although he just as predictably supports hanging George W. Bush).

Not surprisingly, most dictators have closed ranks around Saddam because they've drawn exactly the same conclusion as Iraqis and the aforementioned exiles in Zimbabwe have: if they ever have to account for their crimes in a courtroom of their own people, they're as good as dead. No dictator is afraid of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, and frankly, who can blame them? The extradition proceedings take an eternity. They confine you in large, well appointed quarters. And no matter what - under any circumstances - is there any chance of receiving the death penalty.

There isn't a dictator on earth that's afraid of receiving three hot meals a day and cable television for the rest of his life, when the alternative might be answering for genocide, torture and political repression at the end of a rope. Even merely being deposed and killed isn't regarded with quite the same horror. Nicolae Ceauşescu was tried in secret and shot, avoiding the indignity of hanging, and of having his victims testifying before him and making him confront his bloody hands.

Saddam's trial by free Iraqis represented exactly the sort of justice rulers like Saddam worked so hard to avoid, and I imagine that dictators across the world loosened their collars in discomfort when they heard the verdict. This is, quite literally, their worst case scenario - worse even than exile, prison, or being overthrown in a coup d'etat, or even dying in combat. There literally is nothing that scares them more than what Saddam is facing, and it's a fear they should certainly respect.

I don't know if the same day will ever come for Mugabe, Castro, or Omar al-Bashir, but Saddam's fate will give hope to the right people - the people currently being ground under the heel of dictators seeking to restore the justice they've been denied for too long.

Check.

Check. The former Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, has been sentenced by a court in Baghdad to death by hanging for his role in orchestrating the massacre of Dujail in 1982.

Should his automatic appeal fail, Saddam's sentence will be carried out "within 30 days" after his appeal is exhausted. The appeal is scheduled to take place within the next 30 days as well, meaning, quite possibly, that the world may finally be rid of the Strongman of Tikrit once and for all before 2007.

The reaction in Iraq has been generally ecstatic. After all: what captive nation hasn't secretly dreamed of the day their tyrants are brought to heel by their terrified subjects? As usual, however, the European Union is sniffing about how uncivilized this hanging business is, and even one of Saddam's harshest critics is arguing for mercy.

Irony pervades Saddam's date with the hangman on a number of levels. Many of the European nations now opposing Saddam's future hanging showed some fondness for the noose themselves when dealing with the Germans who had terrorized their nations during the second world war. On another level, Saddam and the Ba'ath party were extremely fond of using public hangings as a means of maintaining control of the state. Now, of course, he's almost certainly going to feel what it's like when they tie the knot right behind his ear during the last minute of his wretched life.

Yet another level of irony is present here. For those people who don't know - or don't want to know - about the death penalty, hanging is considered a punishment for the lowest sorts of crimes committed by common criminals, like thieves, murderers and rapists. Saddam, of course, considers himself a military and political figure, and therefore, entitled to a more "honorable" execution by firing squad as befits a man of his stature. With any luck, he's already starting to feel the rope tighten around his neck, and the world will finally be rid of one of the 20th century's most bloodthirsty tyrants.

Saddam and Syria in the news

I've long since returned from vacation, but I've been terribly remiss in updating this blog. Then again, most of the world's dictators have been laying low. I'm not the only one who takes some vacation time in the summer, after all!

One dictator who has been in the news lately is former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein who has recently broken his hunger strike, and told his prosecutors that, if convicted, he would rather be shot by a firing squad than hanged. In this age of execution by lethal injection, we have become somewhat squeamish about capital punishment, and some people may have forgotten that hanging is a punishment traditionally reserved for common criminals - an indignity Saddam feels is beneath him as befits his status as president of Iraq. Well, former president of Iraq, but Saddam has never quite accepted his demotion from "president" to "defendant" in a graceful way.

Staying the Middle East, one may have noticed the current dust up between Israel and Hezbollah. I cannot help but wonder: was the Hezbollah offensive that triggered this war part of a power play by Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to strengthen Syria's weakening grip on its former client state, Lebanon?

After the hamfisted assassination of Rafik Hariri and the subsequent diastrous (for Syria, anyway) Cedar Revolution, it seemed Lebanon's days as a de facto Syrian colony were at an end. Could the junior Assad be as inept as the senior Assad was shrewd? Are Damascus and Tehran waging their proxy war against Israel to satisfy hard liners domestically? Does Assad hope to reverse Syria's loss of regional influence? Most importantly, why has Assad been silent during the fighting? Obviously, Assad doesn't dare challenge Israel directly, and he certainly won't be sending the Syrian military back to Southern Lebanon while the nearly invincible Israeli military is there. Given the current anti-Israeli mood in Europe and the United Nations, it seems safe to bet that he's weighing the pros and cons of jumping back into Lebanon the very second the Israelis pull out.

I have always thought Bashar al-Assad to be a shadow of the dictator his father was, but if he's looking through his father's old playbook for the next move, I may be forced to review my estimation of his skills as a dictator.

Something I need to clear up

Galloway flirting with Uday Hussein

When I admit to having an unhealthy interest in dictators, I should hasten to add that this does not mean I actually like the bastards, but rather, that I find the social, political and economic aspects of totalitarian rule fascinating. After all, most dictators are completely loathesome people prone to doing absolutely unspeakble things to their captive populations. So what sort of an asshole would actually suck up to a dictator he's not in fear of?

Meet British MP George Galloway, my American friends, the sole member of the RESPECT party. When he's not busy sucking up to the likes of Saddam Hussein and Syran dictator Bashar al-Assad, he's often busy advocating the mutiny of British troops in Iraq and begging the tyrants he flatters to line his pockets. That is, of course, when he's not siphoning monies from the charity he's established. Or looting the late, unlamented, UN sponsored "oil-for-food" program. After all, how can one expect a humble public servant afford a Mercedes and a villa in Portugal on a public servant's salary?

While some people may feel that I have a genuine affection for dictators, I don't really. After all, I'd certainly hate to be mistaken for a douchebag like my good pal George Galloway. A greatest hits PDF file can be examined here. Be careful: it may induce vomiting.

The ultimate mob trial

While watching re-runs of The Sopranos, I reflected briefly on the nature of organized crime. Very few leaders of La Cosa Nostra die old or rich, and even fewer die old, rich, and in charge.

So it is with the world's dictators. The trial of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad resembles, at least superficially, the trial of a gangland boss. There are the kickbacks, internal power struggles, and worst of all, the inevitable incriminating tapes chock full of damning evidence. Part of what made Saddam's Iraq so dangerous is that his family ran the country like an organized crime cartel, and like the mafioso of old, Saddam has run out of options. Saddam was so brazen that he made absolutely no attempts to cover up his brutality, insisting that his authority as President of Iraq granted absolute impunity. As such, there are tens of thousands of hours of tapes, warehouses full of documents, and tens of thousands of material witnesses to help indict Saddam Hussein. If each evil act of Saddam's rule were brought under seperate indictments, his trial would likely last for a thousand years. Thankfully, the prosecutors are bringing on indictments singly at first, knowing that if they fail to convict on the Dujail massacre, they can move on the poison gas attack on Halabja until they get their man. Saddam authorized (and in many cases, performed with his own hands) acts that caused an impressive number of Germans to go to the gallows 60 years ago.

Unlike the pathetic "international war crimes tribunal" that ineptly set out to prosecute the late Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic, the Iraqi authorities have wisely decided to deal with Saddam themselves - in house. Given that Saddam's brutality and capriciousness were extreme, even in the context of a Middle Eastern absolute dictatorship, the government Iraq is either to be lauded (or ridiculed) for their dogged insistence on giving Saddam a fair trial before sending him to the gallows - especially given that most Iraqis have vivid memories of what the Iraqi justice system was like during Saddam's rule.

Will Saddam be hung? Shot? Die of old age during his trial? I don't know, but I do take enormous satisfaction that another capo di tutti capi won't be dying rich, comfortable or free.