The StuSie

A New Exercise in Hypocracy

Yesterday the United States' latest minion, the 'democratic' Iraq, began the court proceedings in what will most certainly trump the seemingly untrumpable O.J. Simpson case as the trial of the century. What could possibly be more entertaining for world television audiences than a former football star run amok with a dull hunting blade and a pair of cheap undersized driving gloves (not to mention porn stars, alleged bisexuals, an obviously lesbian prosecuting attorney, and shit, a low-speed Bronco chase!)? Well, Sadaam, you've outdone The Juice by best-exemplifying the characteristics of the biblical anti-christ, mowing down your own kind while also ushering in the renaissance of the terrible weaponry of World War I. Moreover, the scary black beard and the brash rhetoric is simply more marketable than Putin's classy, suit-wearing, under-the-table brand of despotism, and come on, who else has the cajones to order the execution of their own family members over a tasty cous cous and hummus breakfast. Only you, Mr. President, have earned the right to be front and center on the world's legal stage.
Yes, in the first day of the trial, Sadaam, perhaps expectedly, claimed to still be the rightful President of Iraq, and also rebuked the newly-appointed, obviously U.S.-friendly judges for being traitors to the Iraqi people. After all, Sadaam was forcefully removed from power by an unjustified invasion, right? Let's be straight, I think we all know and agree at this point in time that Mr. Hussein is indeed a huge horse's ass, and that he is perhaps one of the most ruthless and deliberate tyrants of our time. What I think many people overlook, however, is that there is in effect very little difference between what Hussein exacted upon the Kurds and various others, and what our esteemed Mr. Bush and several other world leaders have less deliberately done to countless others in much more diverse corners of the planet. The way I see it, the only difference is that we 'Westerners' have constructed such a complex clusterfuck of a bureaucracy around our power structures that it is all but impossible to assign any sort of blame on any individual (AOL keyword: US Army and torture). Furthermore, our current esteemed administration (and a handful of administrations before) have systematically made the various media their bitch, resulting in the fact even liberal media reflect the fact that the U.S., for example, indeed has good intentions, even if we sometimes are a blundering moron of a world superpower.
Following this vane of thought, I watched excerpts from the beginning of the trial yesterday and thought: so we want to convict good ol' Sadaam the anti-christ for knocking off a few thousand pesky Kurds, whilst the American troops are trigger-happily strafing central-Iraqi towns for thousands of stray Sunni's that just might possibly maybe perhaps be harboring thoughts of support for their former leader. The point is, it really doesn't matter whether a murderer uses poison gas or a tomahawk cruise missle, and it doesn't matter if your inner purpose is to maintain stability by offing those who oppose you, or if you 'free' a country with the goal of lowering oil prices by mowing down civilians. The Iraqi judges certainly have the evidence and support of the world to convict Mr. Hussein. In fact, it seems laughable that they even want to systematically examine the evidence; but if we as onlookers decide that Sadaam should hang, then we have the obligation to look more carefully at our heavily bureaucratized system of foreign policy and see that the rhetoric of 'freedom' and 'democracy' is about as believeable as Michael Jackson on the stand claiming he didn't diddle Macaulay Culkin. This trial is just another example of the winners writing history and being the ultimate judges in whose wrong is wrong, and whose wrong is right. Let's just hope that over one tyrant's dead body we can recognize our own great hypocracy.

posted by der Mistfink @ 08:49