Justice Served
Saddam Hussein's Verdict
By Michael Rubin
Posted: Monday, November 6, 2006

ARTICLES
National Review Online
Publication Date: November 6, 2006

On Sunday, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for crimes against humanity. National Review Online asked a group of experts to weigh in on the significance of the development--for Iraq and for the United States.


Resident Scholar Michael Rubin

The verdict against Saddam is a good thing, but anti-climactic. For most Iraqis, the era of Saddam has passed. Their problems are different now. The trial was about process. I’m not so worried about mass outbreaks of violence. Pretty much all Iraqis--including Saddam’s allies--acknowledge his faults. Saddam is more popular on the streets of Cairo and Paris than he is in Baghdad or Basra. Sure, some Iraqis will take advantage of his execution to manipulate the Western media or pursue their own agendas through violence, but most Iraqis have already moved on. Many unrepentant Baathists blame Saddam for their downfall, the way many unreformed communists blame Mikhail Gorbachev for the end of the Soviet Union. Saddam’s execution will not damper the insurgency. Too many Iraqis still aspire to be the new Saddam, and Washington has already telegraphed that it makes concessions to violence. Still, Saddam’s accountability is important not only for Iraq but also for the wider region. Other Middle Eastern dictators should take note. Within Iraq, Saddam’s date with the hangman should raise other questions. Iraqi Sunni Arabs would be right to ask if Muqtada al-Sadr and Abdulaziz Hakim will be held accountable for ongoing atrocities. So too should insurgent leaders who target Iraqi school children. In Iraqi Kurdistan, human-rights activists already ask why Kurdish leaders should not reveal their role in the disappearance of 3,000 Kurds--many of them civilians snatched off the street--during the 1994-1997 Kurdish civil war.

Iraqis should be applauded. Many international organizations said that they would be incapable of a trial. Human Rights Watch played political football with Iraqi victims when they threatened to withhold evidence they had gathered in Iraq after 1991 unless the tribunal agreed to renounce capital punishment. But the Iraqis persevered. The trial may have been chaotic, but that it was an Iraqi trial was important. The tribunal was about justice, not providing a cashcow to NGOs or an excuse for the U.N. to dispense six figure salaries and benefit packages as patronage.

So is there a U.S. angle? George W. Bush should make no apologies for ridding the world of two of the most atrocious regimes. While previous administrations talked, Bush put words into action. It is a tragedy that Saddam is facing the hangman only in 2006 rather than 1976. Still, it would be as wrong for the Republicans to use Iraq as a political football as it is for the Democrats who do so. Americans are wise enough to make their own judgments. Dignity requires the White House to remain silent.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at AEI.

57 Iraqis Charged In Abuse At Prison
Two Probes Implicate Interior Ministry Staff
By Sudarsan Raghavan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, November 7, 2006; A01

BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 -- Iraq's Interior Ministry has charged 57 employees, including high-ranking officers, with human rights crimes for their roles in the torture of hundreds of detainees once jailed in a notorious eastern Baghdad prison known as Site 4, officials announced Monday.

The charges marked the first time the present Iraqi government has taken criminal action against members of its own security forces for operating torture chambers inside Interior Ministry prisons, said Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman.

Sunni Arab detainees and human rights groups have long alleged that members of the ministry's police force, made up mostly of Shiite Muslims, took revenge on Sunni captives through beatings and other brutal methods. For months, Shiite officials have said such accusations are exaggerations, branding them attempts by Sunnis to discredit the Shiite-led government.

But on Monday, senior Interior Ministry officials acknowledged there was clear evidence of such abuses, following a probe by three separate investigative committees that lasted 2 1/2 months.

A U.N. human rights report reached a similar conclusion in the summer, after Iraqi and U.S. officials uncovered the torture during a visit to Site 4 in May. More than 1,400 detainees at Site 4 were held in "overcrowded, unsafe, and unhealthy conditions" and "suffered systematic physical and psychological abuse" by Interior Ministry officials, the report said. Investigators also took photos that "documented lesions resulting from torture as well as equipment used for this purpose."

"Whoever abuses power and authority will be held accountable, regardless of their position or background," Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told reporters in an opulent room in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces. "This is giving a lesson for those in our ministry who may want to violate the law."

The action was the latest move in a series of recent Interior Ministry crackdowns on the police forces it runs. The Iraqi government is engaged in an intense struggle to bring under control sectarian reprisal killings, death squads and criminal gangs.

U.S. pressure is also growing to get rid of militias and death squads that are widely believed to have infiltrated Iraq's security forces. U.S. officials said they have warned the Iraqi government that U.S. law bars financially backing any foreign security force that violates human rights with impunity.

In recent months, Bolani has fired more than 3,000 employees. In early October, the ministry suspended an entire police brigade on the suspicion that its members could be linked to Shiite death squads. Two weeks later, the ministry removed two of its highest-ranking police generals, who led its special police commandos and its public order brigade, both widely known to be infiltrated by Shiite militias.

Khalaf said one of the generals had played a role in the Site 4 abuses and "was disciplined within the military's legal system." The U.N. report said the Site 4 prison was holding detainees who were previously held by the public order brigade and the Wolf Brigade, a special Interior Ministry police commando unit.

Khalaf declined to name the commander, saying the names of all the accused would be released after they faced a criminal trial. In all, the investigating committees indicted 20 commissioned officers, 20 noncommissioned officers and 17 policemen and civilians. They were dismissed from their jobs and served with arrest warrants, Khalaf said. They could receive jail sentences.

"If the officer carried out the torture with his own hands, or supervised it, or it occurred while he was in command, it's all the same thing," Khalaf said.

On Monday, both U.N. and U.S. officials described the criminal charges as a positive development for efforts to bring order and the rule of law to Iraq. "The fact there seems to be action on Site 4 is a step in the right direction," said Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the U.N. human rights office for Iraq, which published the report. "It's an indication that the minister is taking seriously his responsibility and acting accountable."

"This is one step of many he needs to take in this direction," said Army Maj. Gerald Ostlund, a U.S. military spokesman who focuses on issues concerning Iraq's security forces, referring to the minister.

Magazzeni said he hoped the Site 4 action would spur closer scrutiny of atrocities that unfolded in another Interior Ministry facility in the Baghdad neighborhood of Jadriyah in November last year. U.S. soldiers entered an underground bunker there and found a clandestine torture center where scores of Sunni men were held for months. Many were beaten, starved and then killed by their Shiite captors.

A report on Jadriyah was delivered to Iraq's government, but its findings have never been publicly released nor its perpetrators forced to face justice. "That would be another way to help reduce the feeling of impunity," Magazzeni said.

It remains to be seen whether Bolani, a Shiite and an engineer by training, can take on senior figures in his ministry who are suspected of links to Shiite militias. Many are left from the days of his predecessor, Bayan Jabr, who many Sunnis allege turned the ministry into his own Shiite fiefdom and a haven for the militias.

Bolani has no political affiliations, a quality that made him attractive as a replacement for Jabr. But this very independence means he has less clout in getting rid of politically connected co-workers inside the ministry.

"That's part of his challenge," Ostlund said. "You fire somebody from the government here, what have you turned them into? What have they become the day after? Sometime it is better to keep your enemies closer than your friends."

On Monday, Bolani spoke cautiously. Asked if any of the 57 alleged offenders were members of Shiite militias, he said that "no reference to militias came up during the investigation."

Khalaf, the spokesman, was also cautious when asked if the ministry would go after Jabr, now Iraq's finance minister and alleged by human rights groups to have been aware of the torture unfolding in Site 4 and other ministry prisons.

"This is not true," Khalaf said of the allegation. "No minister would allow such violations if he knew, because the Interior Minister is for all of Iraq's people."

Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World) (Hardcover)
by Mark R. Cohen "I am dispatching this letter to the most illustrious elders, may God preserve them, to inform them that the bearer of this (letter) is a..." (more)
Key Phrases: Arabic Box, Middle Ages, Mishneh Torah (more...)
List Price: $39.50
Price: $39.50 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
=========================================================

Editorial Reviews
Review
Miriam Hoexter, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem : Cohen has made the first comprehensive book-length attempt to study the subject of poverty in a premodern Jewish community. This book is an important contribution.

Amy Singer, Tel Aviv University : Cohen's book constitutes a significant contribution both to the study of the Jewish world of medieval Egypt and to the study of poverty and charity in medieval society generally.

Book Description
What was it like to be poor in the Middle Ages? In the past, the answer to this question came only from institutions and individuals who gave relief to the less fortunate. This book, by one of the top scholars in the field, is the first comprehensive book to study poverty in a premodern Jewish community--from the viewpoint of both the poor and those who provided for them.

Mark Cohen mines the richest body of documents available on the matter: the papers of the Cairo Geniza. These documents, located in the Geniza, a hidden chamber for discarded papers situated in a medieval synagogue in Old Cairo, were preserved largely unharmed for more than nine centuries due to an ancient custom in Judaism that prohibited the destruction of pages of sacred writing. Based on these papers, the book provides abundant testimony about how one large and important medieval Jewish community dealt with the constant presence of poverty in its midst.

Building on S. D. Goitein's Mediterranean Society and inspired also by research on poverty and charity in medieval and early modern Europe, it provides a clear window onto the daily lives of the poor. It also illuminates private charity, a subject that has long been elusive to the medieval historian. In addition, Cohen's work functions as a detailed case study of an important phenomenon in human history. Cohen concludes that the relatively narrow gap between the poor and rich, and the precariousness of wealth in general, combined to make charity "one of the major agglutinates of Jewish associational life" during the medieval period.

-------------------

IRAQ WAR COVERAGE RIPPED!

?
Iraqi Kurdistan Prime Minister Nerchivan Barzani
Speaks with Parents of Fallen U.S. Troops in Iraq

IRAQI KURD PRIME MINISTER SLAMS
MEDIA COVERAGE OF IRAQ WAR:

"CNN International and Al Jazeera are equally bad in their coverage of the situation in Iraq"


(ERBIL, IRAQ) – The Prime Minister of the Iraqi Kurdistan regional government met with the families of fallen U.S. soldiers today and he had a message for the news media: your coverage of the Iraq war is terribly biased.

"CNN International and Al Jazeera are equally bad in their coverage of the situation in Iraq,” said Nerchivan Barzani, Prime Minister of Iraqi Kurdistan.

“When I was in the United States recently and read the negative news in the Washington Post, New York Times and in the network TV broadcasts, I even wondered if things had gotten so bad since I had left that I shouldn't return," said Prime Minister Barzani.

The comments came during meetings between the Prime Minister and the delegation of Gold Star Families who are on a historic trip to Iraq. These families lost a child in Operation Iraqi Freedom, and they are in Iraq now to see the progress being made that their children gave their lives for.

Yesterday they joined the people in Iraq in celebrating the GUILTY verdict handed down against the murderous former dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

These American families are on a 10-day journey to Iraq to see the land where their children died in the fight against terrorism. Never before has such a coordinated delegation of Gold Star Families visited Iraq, and their arrival comes amidst news reports that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program under development before Coalition Forces toppled his regime.

The trip is organized by the nation’s largest grass-roots pro-troop organization, Move America Forward which was founded in 2004.

COMPLETE DETAILS – INCLUDING PHOTOGRAPHS & AUDIO FILES ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE: www.MoveAmericaForward.org

Q. & A. With Thomas L. Friedman
Thomas L. Friedman became the paper's foreign-affairs columnist in 1995. He won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, his third Pulitzer for The New York Times.
Mr. Friedman joined The Times in 1981 and was appointed Beirut bureau chief in 1982. In 1984 he was transferred from Beirut to Jerusalem, where he served as Israel bureau chief until 1988. Mr. Friedman was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Lebanon) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting (from Israel). He also served as the chief White House correspondent and subsequently served as chief economic correspondent in the Washington bureau.
His latest book, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century," was released in April 2005.
Mr. Friedman answered readers' questions for TimesSelect Free Access Week.
Consequences of Withdrawal From Iraq
Q. In your opinion, what are the consequences of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq? Short of troop escalation and a long term commitment to more boots on the ground, what are the alternatives?
-- Phil Eigner, Briarcliff Manor, N.Y.
A. Obviously a lot will depend on how we withdraw. Would it be in a negotiated framework with an Iraqi government or more unilaterally, a la Vietnam and Lebanon? I believe that the only thing that could possibly stem the chaos in Iraq would be a massive troop escalation of 500,000 soldiers, for a long time. Not likely. The most likely scenario, and for me the preferred one, is that we will have to set a date to leave.
What would happen, in fast motion, is what is now happening in slow motion under our noses: Iraq will break apart into three jagged-edged segments - a Kurdish zone in the north, a Sunni zone in the East and a Shiite zone in the south, with Baghdad becoming partitioned in a similar fashion. Iraq's oil exports of 1.6 million barrels a day would likely be, at least temporarily, interrupted. Turkey would be tempted to go into Kurdistan to prevent Kurdish independence, unless we intervened to prevent that. Syria would get more closely involved in openly supporting the Sunnis in Iraq and the Shiites in Iran, so the civil war would definitely take on a more regional dimension. Jordan would be swamped with Iraqi refugees.
Inside Iraq, the killing would intensify between communities, until it burns itself out. How long that would take is impossible to predict. In Lebanon it took 14 years.
Would there be some strategic upsides for us as well? I believe so. Iran and Syria, now allies, would be on opposite sides. Iran, the major power in the area, would have to intervene with the Shiites of Iraq to prevent the instability spilling across the Iran-Iraq border. This would eventually lead to tensions between Iraqi and Iranian Shiites. Those tensions are currently deflected by the focus on the U.S. Iran, in effect, would become the de facto manager of Iraq's mess in the south. The Sunni tribes in Iraq, I suspect, would increasingly go after the Sunni al-Qaeda types, who have infiltrated from abroad.
The price of oil would probably go back to the $80 a barrel range, which, from my point of view, would be good, since it will only push us to invest more in alternative energy. It will be an ugly scene, but it will not be the end of the world.
The Rise of Hezbollah

Q. What are the historical reasons for the inherent weakness in the Lebanese government? Why have they consistently failed to deliver basic services in the South to the point where Hezbollah fills that void?
-- Jim Brennan, Jersey City, N.J.

A. At the core of the Lebanese national compact has always been a basic power-sharing agreement between Maronite Christians and Sunni Muslims. The Shiites of Lebanon, now the single largest confessional group in the country, were always an after thought. While the Christians were guaranteed the presidency by the Lebanese constitution, and the Sunnis were guaranteed the prime minister's office, the Shiites were allotted the third position of speaker of the parliament.
Why? Because as a community they were less economically powerful, less educated, poorer, and with fewer strong leaders, and, for a long time until the Amal and Hezbollah militias came along, less militarily powerful. For all those reasons they were treated as second-class citizens. They were also concentrated in south Lebanon, away from the capital and away from the best government services -- although many Shiites live there today in the southern suburbs of Beirut. The Shiites for decades got a smaller slice of the Lebanese pie than their numbers merited. Hezbollah stepped into that vacuum.
Islam, Terrorism and Democracy
Q. Do you have any solution to the problem of the disaffected young Islamic men who are convinced that the afterlife is better than this one and that they are doing something good for those they take with them in a suicide bombing? We clearly need a new approach beyond counterintelligence and law enforcement.
-- Scott Clark, Bishop, CA
Q. Do you think it is possible for democracy to work in an Islamic nation without secularization?
-- Anissa Talantikite, Student, Amherst, Mass.
A. Let me address both questions, because they are interrelated: The second largest Muslim country in the world is India. And, as far as we know, there do not seem to be many Indian Muslims in al-Qaeda.
Why not? Partly the answer is culture. India has what Lawrence Harrison in "The Central Liberal Truth" calls a "progress-prone" culture. And partly the answer is context. India is a free-market democracy, albeit a messy one, where young people, Hindu or Muslim, boys or girls, have a chance to realize their full potential - even with the lingering caste system.
The Arab-Muslim world has a less progress-prone culture, which can best be appreciated by reading the U.N.'s Arab Human Development Report, which talks about the deficits of freedom, education and women's empowerment that bedevil much of the Arab-Muslim world today. The Arab-Muslim world also has a political context that is dominated by kings and dictators. No wonder large numbers of young people in these countries are just sitting around, hoping to emigrate or falling prey to religious preachers who blame all their problems on Israel or America and promise a glorious afterlife.
It is hard to point to an example where Islam and democracy have worked well together. There are Muslim countries that are democracies, like Turkey, Malaysia and Indonesia, but they have been largely secularized and not run on Koranic law. I think Islam and democracy could work well together, but it would take the sort of reformation of Islam that Christianity and Judaism went through. There are Muslim thinkers who have called for that.
Oil is a big problem too. When you have so much oil you never have to think about empowering your people. All you have to think about is where to drill next.
Do We Need a Draft?

Q. Do you think we need to re-institute the draft, and do you think the draft would help homogenize our country, and help bridge the growing divide between the rich and poor? Would young people be more involved in politics if we had a draft or requirement for community service that affected everyone?
-- Jill Carpenter, Sewanee, TN
A. I do wish we had a requirement for community service, because I think it would be a great homogenizer and civics class. Even if it were just three months after high school and before college, it would make a difference.
As for a draft, absent a major war, I am a little more dubious, simply because military service in the 21st century requires a lot of education. We have a very educated armed forces. All you have to do is spend time with them to see that. And any general will tell you that if we had an army that took in every 18 year old, it would be a huge training problem. A chunk of them would not have the skill sets or education to master the modern military today - starting with being able to read a manual or read a map.
Is Nation-Building Still Possible?

Q.The current war notwithstanding, do you think that it might someday be possible for the U.S. to use our power to reshape the world or a region as we had once hoped to do in Iraq? Or is the concept of nation-building completely discredited?
--Kenneth King, Cincinnati, OH
A. I think that the American experience in Iraq is going to discredit the concept of nation-building for a long, long time. We won't be doing this again soon. What we have learned in Iraq, but should have known before we went, is that there is no country in the world that we cannot destroy all by ourselves. And there is no country in the world that we can build by ourselves.
Iraq was not a classic nation-building exercise. I would call it more nation-creating. We were starting from scratch. Secretary of State Rice said it was like Germany after World War II. I would say it was like Germany, but Germany of 1648, before it was a modern state, rather than Germany in 1948.
We were able to rebuild Germany and Japan after WWII, but there are real differences with Iraq. We defeated them with large numbers of troops and we imposed an effective occupation. We never defeated the Sunnis of Iraq and we never imposed an effective occupation controlling the country. Moreover, Germany and Japan had a tradition of democracy and free markets that we could build on. Iraq had very little.
We have not even absorbed yet the full impact of the failure of Iraq. Once we do, we will be out of the nation-building business, as I said, for a long, long time.
Education in the U.S.

Q. You have written a lot about the crisis in education in the United States. If Europe and Asia have figured out in general how to educate their children, why can we not do the same?
-- Paul A. Olivier, Dalat City, Vietnam
A. One thing I have learned in writing about education and traveling as I do as a columnist is this: Everyone in the world actually thinks they are behind.
Asia is very strong in teaching its young people math and science. But they are not very innovative. When was something as new, big and earth-shaking as Google invented in Asia or Europe? Our best young people may be less prepared in math and science, but they are encouraged to think in creative, innovative ways. A lot of that has to do with whether or not you have a culture that encourages questioning of authority.
My guess is that what we are going to see is a global convergence, in time, around education. Asia will become more creative - their educators are thinking about this a lot right now - and America will get stronger in fundamentals of science and math. To be honest, I would rather have our problem. It is easier to teach someone stronger fundamentals than to change a culture that does not encourage free-thinking or challenging of authority.
We also still have an advantage in having private colleges and universities: there are real islands of excellence - Yale, Stanford, M.I.T. - that few other societies can match. Our weakness is in kindergarten through 12th grade, and that is where we need to put our focus. But there we need better parenting, not just better teachers. Parents focused on making sure their kids are doing their homework, and not mindlessly surfing the net or playing video games, have the biggest effect of all, in my view.

The Role of Palestinians' Arab Neighbors

Q. What is the role that neighboring Arab countries play in the Palestinian conflict and why is it that they are not more involved helping the Palestinian government out?
-- Macarena Rodriguez, New York, N.Y.
A. The Arab states like to weep for the Palestinians, or use them as a political tool, but when it really comes down to helping them, well, few of them ever deliver.
Look at Gaza. Israel got out of Gaza. Gaza is a desperately poor place, in need of jobs and housing. Had the Arab world convened a Gaza investment summit and agreed to put $2 billion in infrastructure and new businesses into Gaza, imagine where it would be today? It never happened.
Hamas thrives off of that. Hamas thrives because Gaza is isolated, frustrated and needs social services that its own government cannot provide. Gaza is poor, but the Palestinian people are talented and hard working. It had a chance to become another Dubai, but it seems headed toward becoming another Mogadishu.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in more of a mess than I have ever seen since the 1967 war. If there is a light in the tunnel, I don't see it, and I have very good eyesight for such things.
Competitiveness and Outsourcing

Q. Middle-aged American engineers, like me, have been tremendously negatively impacted by outsourcing of our jobs to India and China and now Russia and Eastern Europe. How will the U.S. remain technically competitive if our experienced engineers are shunted out of the job market by what is essentially cheap overseas labor?
-- Ross Lunsford, St. Louis, MO
A. Yours is a real problem. Obviously, in a flat world, certain kinds of work will migrate faster, and for the first time that work is skilled, white-collar work, not just blue-collar manufacturing.
But there is only one answer and that is entrepreneurship and education. Look how many engineers and math experts Google has hired - in America and abroad. Growing businesses now grow businesses everywhere. I can't believe that someone with sound engineering skills cannot get a job today in America - but you may have to relocate to a different city or a different industry to do it. The job market is changing rapidly, and that is why the ability to learn how to learn is the single most important survival skill anyone can have.
But I think where you have a legitimate complaint is that the jobs may still be here, including engineering, but because of foreign competition, they will pay less. We are definitely seeing some of that in some fields. I wish I had an answer for that problem. But I don't. We know that free-trade and education work, and we don't want to abandon them. But, that said, in today's global economy will they work for as many Americans as they did before? I am not sure. We may just be in a transition. We may be in a new world.