Getting out of the cellars

Submitted by Alain Jean-Mairet (Switzerland), Dec 17, 2003 at 03:44

There are always many ways to do wrong and few to do well. What should be done now? With Saddam Hussein, and his trial. With America and its image in the world? What would happen in a good world? In a world where good ways impose themselves?

Saddam Hussein's judgment is an opportunity to reveal to the world at large the mechanisms of some of the worst possible mistakes. A good trial would thus be one that brings to light the real origins of the evils Iraq had to go through during the last few dozens of years.

Saddam Hussein shouldn't have been allowed to get to power. He obviously was not a good ruler. So why has he become such a powerful man? Why did he get such support, in Iraq and the Arab world, and in the west and then even in the east?

If the study of Saddam Hussein's rise and fall can lead to the definition, and its implementation in Iraq, of only one solid (political, social) system that would efficiently prevent such a situation, the whole thing would already make some sort of sense. If it can clarify, not only for the intellectuals among us but for the bulk of the informed population, the chain of events that led so many world leaders to support the wrong man and the wrong deeds, then it will have been a good trial. And if it can be accompanied by a large broadening of awareness of the basic tenets of good government practice, then it will have been a plain good thing. Regardless of Saddam Hussein's future fate.

America detains many of the tools which can be used to achieve this success. The most important of them might be Saddam Hussein himself. The man has always been obsessed by power and the means of owing it. A good trail would bring him to the understanding of what was irremediably flawed in his models and principles (and not merely in his actions). Many people whose principles or beliefs constitute severe problems of today's world could possibly be influenced, consciously or not, by such a broad enlightening of the historical facts and their psychological (spiritual, religious) background.

A good trial would free many people from their hiding cellar.

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