In Iraq, Hussein Goes Bone Deep

The first thing I noticed when I walked into the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad this August was how eerily quiet it was. A knot of Iraqis crushed around a television at the far end of the normally chaotic lobby. A defiant Saddam Hussein was on the set, urging resistance and threatening collaborators. Of the transfixed guests and hotel staff the manager said, “We watch him like we watch a terrible accident, afraid our bones could break if we do not pay attention -- because his bones are our bones.”

Hussein will continue to draw a crowd, less out of fear now than out of a desire to know what becomes of him. Reviled as he is by so many in Iraq, he still shares the marrow of a suspicious and impatient nation. He is a tyrant who no doubt will adopt the pained demeanor of a wronged great- uncle in coming weeks.

For better or worse, he is as close to a national symbol as it gets. With such symbolism comes perils and advantages.

The first advantage of capturing Hussein alive is that the mystique he has manicured over several decades can now be dismantled rather than embellished in martyrdom. Yet it would be perilous to humiliate the man. Around him churn a complex set of emotions. To gloat over his capture or to repeatedly shame him in a public fashion risks visiting additional disgrace on Iraqis who are already uncomfortable with not taking him down themselves, or insulting those who still see in him the symbol of the state. Instead, recent events provide the opportunity to demonstrate that the rule of law applies even to individuals as pitiless as Hussein.

His capture offers the chance to discredit the infectious and enduring culture of corruption, exploitation and violence exemplified by him and his ruthless, self-absorbed and unaccountable cronies. This class of individuals defined and epitomized a distorted set of values that promoted personal achievement by theft, betrayal, smuggling, plunder and violence. As a Baghdad University student confided one summer evening, “We have to recognize what we became under Saddam Hussein before we can make a new peace and democracy in Iraq.”

It would be wrong to make Hussein the personification of what has gone wrong in Iraq. In any court proceeding, the code of conduct that he promoted, that others exemplified and many reluctantly embraced should be shrewdly put on trial with him. To discredit Hussein’s mystique, perhaps dual trials could be held. The first should be local and focus on his violation of Iraq’s own extensive legal code, including charges of extortion, murder and torture, to demonstrate he is as accountable as anyone for criminal violations. Once his myth is punctured, then let him face a war-crimes trial.

For the U.S., the peril is that after the celebrations have stopped, Iraqis will wake up to find the gas lines still there, the electricity still in short supply and sewers still overflowing. Crime and resistance may get even worse. And Iraqis may feel that the U.S. commitment to secure Iraq is ever more fragile. Hussein’s capture may lessen the fear that undermines a transition to peace, or it might make matters more difficult. How to correctly handle Hussein may prove as complicated as finding him in the first place.