America is voting. I am not someone who prays, but if there is anything that could make me do so, it is the tantalizing prospect of both houses of Congress going to the Democrats. We shall see. The Republicans’ disgraceful conduct in office has been bad enough. Their behavior during this campaign makes abundantly clear that they have no honor at all.
Emails are arriving in my inbox from friends and acquaintances, rightly urging everyone to vote. One such email blasts the Bushies as those who “ran the kangaroo court which just convicted Saddam Hussein, although he never posed a threat to the U.S.” Lots of apples and oranges jostling around together in that statement.
There is plenty to find fault with in the running of Saddam’s trial, and ample reason to suspect the announcement of the verdict was timed to coincide with our midterm elections. But the U.S. did not “run” the court. Saddam was not convicted for “posing a threat to the U.S.” but rather for killing Shia Muslims in Dujail (an act that Ramsey Clark, one of Saddam’s attorneys and a fraudulent peace and justice activist, has actually defended). From the onset of this miserable war, the left has ritually referred to Saddam’s Iraq as “a country that never attacked us.” Yes it’s true, but as a talking point it absolutely stinks — it telegraphs an inaccurate impression that the regime was a benign presence in the region and the world.
I oppose the death penalty, as does Jalal Talabani, Iraq’s Kurdish president. I also believe this verdict will further inflame sectarian divisions. Saddam should have been tried in the Hague before an international panel, and not at a time when civil war conditions are prevailing inside Iraq. But I have no sympathy for the man whatsoever. He richly deserves punishment for his crimes, as the Kurds I spoke with in March of this year can attest.
And what awaits us if the Dems take the congressional reins? I don’t know. Michael Kinsley is refreshingly candid in this piece: “Apparently and unfortunately, President Bush is right that the Democrats have no ‘plan for victory.’ (Neither does he, of course. Nor, for that matter, do I. But I don’t claim to have one. And I didn’t start it.)”
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