Ein Herz für Saddam
By Henryk M. Broder
Never before could a deposed dictator reckon with so much sympathy. What does the suffering of the killed and tortured mean, anyway, compared to the humiliation of being filmed during a saliva probe?
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 DDP
Dictator Hussein after his capture: As if Mother Theresa had been caught dodging fares.
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Scarcely had the deposed dictator taken a shower and changed his clothes after his arrest, then the first of the VIP's took it upon themselves to announce what should not, in any way, shape or form, happen to Saddam Hussein. Secretary of State Fischer explained: "Our position on the death penalty is a fundamental one. We oppose it." Fisher was also among the first ones who congratulated the Americans on their success. He did it, to be sure, without any expression of joy on his face and in a voice you would use when you congratulate a neighbour you hate who had just won the lottery.
Even the "Representative for Human Rights" in the Federal Government, Claudia Roth, who was last seen in a war zone when she went to the Bayreuth Play Festival, spoke out decidedly against the death penalty and for a "fair, open and transparent trial" for Saddam. The chairwoman of the Committee for Human Rights in the Bundestag, Christa Nickels, spoke in the same tone: "The death penalty isn't compatible with human rights."
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REUTERS
Federal Chancellor Schröder: As if it was a father who harasses his family while drunk
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But it wasn't only German big-wigs who were concerned about the life and well-being of the deposed Iraqi despot. UN Secretary Genera, Kofi Annan, stated that the United Nations was against the death penalty and did not impose it in any of their courts. Cardinal Renato Martino piped up from the Vatican. After he had seen pictures of "this destroyed man" the high cleric confessed he felt sympathy for the former dictator, who "was treated like a cow" in American captivity.
Nicole Choueiry, the spokeswoman for Amnesty International, did remind us of Saddam's victims, if in a rather paradoxical way: "I don't think imposing the death penalty would make the dead alive again. And, I don't think that those who would impose it would be any different than Saddam Hussein." The Swedish Prime Minister, Göran Persson, successor to the murdered Olof Palme, whose murderers are still being intensively searched for, made, instead, a practical suggestion: Saddam could, after his sentencing in an international court, serve the prison sentence in Sweden - presumably in low security penal system, together with troubled teenagers, who are rehabilitated through sailing jaunts and mountain climbing.
It was an absurd performance which had already started within a few hours after Saddam's arrest. In an ARD-Special Ulrich Wickert asked the question, "If these pictures hurt the dignity of mankind", and then went on to deny it in a long-winded argument. A little later on "heute", Marietta Slomka complained about the "degrading manner of the show" which was made of Saddam. In the "Kulturzeit" on 3Sat, the psychoanalyst Horst Eberhard Richter philosophized over the power of the pictures, which was the reason that many viewers suddenly felt sympathy for Saddam.
With every statement the brutal mass murderer disappeared further and further into the distance, while the tortured man moved ever closer and closer, the one who had to live like a rat in a hole, who was degraded and humiliated, and for whom the same innocent until proven guilty principle should apply as it is for any shoplifter awaiting trial. One could have believed Mother Teresa had been caught dodging fares and now must deal with a show trial now whose outcome would be completely out of proportion to the severity of her crime.
Now it isn't the principle of the revenge that counts in Germany, rather rehabilitation, which is why even Egon Krenz, who was sentenced to six and a half years for homicide at the inner-German border, was released after only four years in custody, most of which he had been allowed to serve as an overnighter. The court saw a "favorable social prognosis" as applicable in his case, which means that the danger that he would ever again have the opportunity to give an order to shoot is so negligible that it could be neglected.
Using the same logic, you could also send Saddam behind Swedish drapery for a couple of years and then release him again as soon as the situation has stabilized itself in Iraq. He wouldn't even have to regret what he did, just like Krenz. He said at his early release: "I have never felt like a murderer, rather as a responsible party in a sovereign country." Now, Krenz was, in spite of all the efforts of the DDR to reach world standards, small potatoes, but these are words that Saddam can scream at to those judging him even before the pronouncement of judgement.
There isn't any argument for imposing the death penalty on mass murderers who have acted as responsible parties in a sovereign state - besides one: Dead men never come back. The civilized world closed both eyes and breathed a sigh of relief when Nicola Ceausescu was put against a wall and shot exactly 14 years ago. But there it was Romanians who put on a quick trial for their "Conducatore", and besides, Claudia Roth wasn't Human Right Representative of the Federal Government yet.
Meanwhile, Saddam Hussein hasn't been sentenced yet, not even accused, and it is already being consulted over how one could save him from "The ultimate punishment", which Bush has talked about. The Spanish Secretary of State demanded a "common EU position" against the death penalty for the former dictator only a couple of days after the EU couldn't agree on a common position for a European constitution. The German Chancellor told "Bild am Sonntag", he is also an "opponent of the death penalty, that's a position of principle". Shouldn't Schröder have made such a statement a couple of weeks earlier during his visit to China where more than 1000 people were executed in 2002, most of whom were petty crooks, compared to Saddam? Why does his principle (and justifiable) aversion to the death penalty only come to Schröder's mind when it concerns a "dictator like Saddam Hussein".
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AP
DDR-Functionary Krenz (1999): "Favorable Social Prognosis"
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On one hand, this may be related to the emotional structure of a society in which the Howard Carpendale's farewell tour triggers more mourning and dismay than the message of the mass graves which, in the meantime, were discovered in Iraq. On the other hand, it has to do with the businesslike hypocrisy which connects the voter with the voted for. The government isn't ashamed to first yell "not with us", only to scream "we want in!" afterwards when it concerns the awarding of contracts, while the pacifist masses take to the streets under the slogan of "no blood for oil", only to OK a little spilling of blood the end of the party - if it's against the right side: 26 per cent of the Germans regard the terrorist attacks as "legitimate acts of the resistance" in Iraq.
Where one's own moral demands are so relative, a "dictator like Saddam Hussein" is also only a relative villain. While exile Iraqis like the writer Hussain Al Mozany speak of a "catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions", which has left an "active, multifunctional murdering machine" in Iraq, the Chancellor talks only of a ruler "who has handled others in the worst way", as if it were a father who has harassed his family while drunk.
And while the Iraqis dig up their dead bodies to say farewell to them, the sympathy of the good guys is directed to a mass murderer who isn't allowed to murder any more. What does the suffering of the killed and tortured mean anyway, compared to the humiliation of being filmed during a saliva probe?
A couple of particularly sensitive cultural critics have already become indignant at the "invasion into Saddam's private life", because of the pictures of U.S. soldiers lounging about in Saddam's palaces and using his gold-painted bathrooms. Now it's the possibility that the man could atone for his atrocities with his life that puts them into preventative excitement. What's strange about the what-to-do-with-Saddam-discussion, however, above all, is that one aspect doesn't appear: Couldn't it be that death for Saddam is far too mild a punishment, that life-imprisonment without the possibility of release would be more appropriate?
Such a punishment should be accompanied with additional measures, though. It wouldn't suffice to simply lock Saddam up and to throw the key into the deepest part of the sea. The best thing would be to play a couple of hours of videos for him every day, tapes of Claudia Roth at the Greens party convention, interspersed with video clips of Andre Rieu and Jeanette Biedermann.
But no, it can't be done. A punishment must be strict, but it can't be unnecessarily gruesome.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2003
"Spiegel-Online"....Ein Herz für Saddam
Translated by longjack
