Dear Editor,
The Christian Bible warns us that “what we sow is what we will reap eventually”. I guess that little piece of advice was not considered worthy of the attention of the Iraqi Baathist regime and its mercurial leader who met his maker under the very kind of questionable judicial circumstances that he supported and turned a blind eye to when he was in power. What greater manifestation of justice can there be than having those who abuse the doctrine that due process under the law should be extended to all and sundry regardless of the nature of their alleged crimes, finding themselves under the sanction of the same pattern of lawlessness to which, under reverse circumstances, they gave a conspiratorial wink and nod. Saddam Hussein sowed the wind of injustice in his nation when in response to an assassination attempt on his life he took extra judicial actions in Dujail against the alleged perpetrators. And he reaped a whirlwind of the same excesses when his execution became an event of taunting and revenge rather than a manifestation of due process under civilized law. At least that is how I see it.
James Madison, a famous American opined that, “If men were angels no Government would be necessary”. And by extension of this thought process we can also add that laid down rules, laws, rights and protections etc would also be unnecessary if we could be counted on to be fair and balanced under circumstances that tax the boundaries and thresholds of our human emotions. The men and women who bestowed upon us a system of justice that required a parity of treatment for all coming under the sanction of the law recognized these human failings and limitations. And the processes they put in place were intended to produce outcomes that were free from and untarnished by what is naturally human in all of us. It is an acceptable reality that there will be occasions when, under emotional and stressful duress caused by the horrible circumstances of some events, we will be tempted to jettison or forget the rules that we are supposed to follow to the letter. The fact is that it requires an enormous level of courage and conscientious conviction to remain steadfast within the narrow perimeters in which legal jurisprudence confines us. But that is the difference between a society courting chaos and pandemonium, and one committed to the pursuance of established and civilized norms.
However regrettable it happens to be, societies will always produce those who transgress against the laws in manners and fashions that tax our civilized patience and tolerance. But it is preferable that occasionally criminals escape justice rather than for the police and officialdom to become engaged in criminal conduct themselves under myopic reasoning that the circumstances of the moment justifies it. For if and when such happenings occur, justice becomes an issue of “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes”. And under such circumstances there are no moral or ethical distinctions between criminal suspects and criminal vigilantes. Goodbye Saddam, you reaped exactly that which you sowed.
Yours faithfully,
Robin Williams
