Saddam: No guilt about Kurd crackdown

[ECH1969]

The prosecution alleges about 180,000 people were killed in the Anfal campaign in 1987-88 to put down a Kurdish insurgency during the later stages of an Iraqi war with Iran . Saddam accused the Kurds of helping Iran in the war.

During the proceedings, a defiant Saddam clutched the Quran, Islam‘s holy book, and insisted that the judge address him as the "president of Iraq ." He accused Kurdish witnesses against him of stirring sectarianism and racism.

Saddam‘s chief lawyer, Iraqi Khalil al-Dulaimi, was not present, but attorneys for other defendants were on hand.

Saddam is still waiting a verdict on Oct. 16 in the first case against him — the nine-month-long trial over the killings of 148 Shiites in Dujail after a 1982 assassination attempt against him there. In that case as well, he and seven other co-defendants could face the death penalty.

http://www.newsone.ca/piercelandherald/ViewArticle.aspx?id=5703&source=2

[GoddessOfGuinness]

1. Great minds think alike.

[Anakin Skywalker]

15. Great minds think alike here on DU as well.

Yours and mine! When I read the post title on Saddam, my first thought was how unapologetic and bullheaded Shrub has been too on his idiotic mistakes.

[denverbill]

2. Hmm. How many Southerners died in the Civil War?

And how many were executed for Lincoln's assassination?

[geek tragedy]

4. Did you just compare Saddam and Lincoln?

:puke:

[denverbill]

7. There are differences, but yes, I did.

You can dismiss it with a pukey smiley, but you'll have to explain how the Kurdish separatists were different from the Confederate rebels. There were an awful lot of southerners who considered Lincoln a despot, then, and even to this day. The point is, if a group rebels against their homeland and the homeland doesn't want to let them go, the result is inevitably a bloody war. Whether it's the US revolting against King George, the Confederates rebelling against the Union, the Vietnamese rebelling against the French, the Chechens rebelling against Russia, the Kurds rebelling against Turkey, or the Kurds rebelling against Iraq.

And just for the record, I grew up idolizing Lincoln. Even now, I think he was a great President, and a good man to boot. Lincoln, unlike Saddam and today's Republican party, did not use torture. Lincoln, unlike Saddam , Osama, and those Republicans who want to nuke Mecca or MOAB Fallujah, did not believe in killing innocent men, women, and children as a means to accomplish his goal.

I guess my point in posting was that there are shades of grey even with Saddam. Yes, many Kurds were killed during the Kurdish rebellion, but how many of those could he claim were 'justified'? I would say that any armed men who were killed could probably be 'justified', but not the slaughter of an entire village using poison gas. Then again, where does that put the fire-bombing of Dresden or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?. If the fire-bombing of Dresden was done to break the will of the German people to continue the war, is a dictator justified in gassing an entire village to break the will of it's people to continue their rebellion?

[geek tragedy]

9. Well, I don't believe the Kurds were rebelling over the

right to keep other human beings as property.

Saddam deliberately targeted non-combatants during his campaign--including multiple uses of poisonous gas.

[denverbill]

11. I think the point of EVERY rebellion is self-determination.

Whether the specific goal is keeping slaves or the desire to be ruled by someone of your own religion or ethnicity, it doesn't really matter to the person putting down a revolt. To that person, the only thing that matters is that you are rebelling, and thus committing treason.

I agree with you. Indiscriminate slaughter of civilians is a crime against humanity. But it's also one that the US has repeatedly engaged in, from Sand Creek to Wounded Knee to Dresden to Hiroshima to My Lai.

[Finder]

10. I understand your point and agree with it.

I also think applying moral relativism is important for understanding certain events whether one agrees with it or not.

[Xithras]

13. Problem is, they don't consider it their "homeland".

Keep in mind the Kurdish perspective. Over untold thousands of years these people built a culture, with a unique language, customs, and political structure. When they were absorbed into the Ottoman Empire, they were given self rule and were permitted to continue living their lives the way they always had...as long as they paid "tribute" to the Empire and didn't attempt to rebel.

Then one day some European white guy in a suit walks in, tells you that your "country" no longer exists, and that you'll have to submit to being ruled by neighbors with whom you don't share a language, a culture, or any real history. Why? Because there's OIL under your feet and it's politically expedient for the European guys to have all the oil run by one country. But it's OK they tell you, because they promise to only take the southern end of your peoples lands. In exchange, they PROMISE to give you a nation to the north. Your people will finally be completely independent and have their own country, if you'll cede this "small" southern section to this new invented country they call "Iraq". The rulers of this "Iraq", in turn, promise that you in the south will maintain the same freedoms and independence your experienced under the Ottomans. Seems like a win/win deal, so your people accede.

Of course, no sooner do the Europeans leave, than the Turks invade. They declare that your new "nation" is null and void, and that your culture will be eliminated. Many of your people flee to the southern portion of your traditional homeland, into the "Iraq" part, to escape the genocide and take advantage of the freedoms they were offered there.

But even that promise turns out to be a lie. It doesn't take long before a ruler comes to power who declares that your nation will be eradicated there too. You are now supposed to abandon your language, your culture, and your traditions because some far off European decided that your 2000 year old village now belongs to some new nation ruled by a far away city populated by cultures you aren't a member of. The leader of this nation decides that cultural assimilation is needed, and starts taking lands and homes in your homeland so that the people from his culture can move onto them. Then one day, a bulldozer and a handful of busses show up. An Iraqi Army officer, speaking some language you barely understand, informs you that you will be taken from the village and hills that your ancestors have called home for thousands of years and placed in an apartment building hundreds of miles away. The rest of the people in your village will be taken too, and your people will be dispersed across the country. And the bulldozer? That's to level the village before you leave to dispel any notions you might have of returning. The Army officers tell you that it's for your own good...the idea is ethnic assimilation, and the goal is to "help" to integrate your people into Iraqi society. You are packed onto a bus and watch helplessly as your home, the one that your grandfathers grandfathers grandfather built and that generations of your family has lived in, is pushed over into a pile of rubble. You cry helplessly as the walls and fences that you grew up climbing are crushed flat. You cannot believe it as the barn, behind which you first kissed your wife, is set aflame.

What would you do?

You cannot be a traitor against a country you never belonged to and were never a part of. Kurds are Kurds, they are not Iraqi's. I can understand why they're violent at times, and I sympathize with their plight. They didn't agree to be subjugated, far off white guys worried about oil supplies did that. They didn't agree to be dispersed. Far off Arabs decided that for them. They didn't agree to be violently attacked. Far off Turkomen chose that fate on their behalf. What do the Kurds want? A homeland so they can govern themselves and be left alone. They want what they were promised. I cannot begrudge them that.

[Codeine]

5. Oh, that's just disgusting.

Saddam is Abraham Lincoln now?!

[denverbill]

8. See #7.

[xchrom]

3. in saddam's neck of the woods -- everyone kills

the kurds -- it's practically a national past time in three countries.

[VegasWolf]

6. Yes, and Bush has no guilt about Sunni crackdowns. nt

[humbled_opinion]

12. He was a dictator right... n/t

[eccles12]

14. Saddam was right on the Kurd-Iran alliance and we will end up fighting

them both. Wait and see.