Don't leave Saddam trial to the 'jet set'

Great editorial by Mark Steyn in the Chicago Sun-Times bq. Anyone who goes goo-goo at the mention of the words "international tribunal" -- i.e., Clark, John Kerry, Howard Dean and the rest of the multilatte multilateralist establishment -- should look at what it boils down to in practice. Even though the court forbade Milosevic and Seselj from actively campaigning in the Serbian election, they somehow managed to. In other words, "international law" is unable to enforce its judgments even in its own jailhouse. bq. But it's worse than that. One reason why Slobo is popular again in Serbia is precisely because of the "international" trial. In 2000, when the strongman of the Balkans was swept from power, he was a discredited figure, a European pariah reviled as a murderous butcher. After two years of legal hair-splitting at the Hague, he's all but fully rehabilitated. True, Slobo, conducting his own defense, has been a shameless showboater, but not half as shameless as the absurd prosecutor Carla del Ponte. It's received wisdom among battered Serb democrats that every clumsy indictment of Ponte's drove Slobo's poll numbers higher. Had Serbs prosecuted Milosevic, that would have been one thing. But once it became Euro-preeners prosecuting Serbs, an understandable resentment set in. and more: bq. President Bush understands that the transnational establishment's interest in this case is not to pass judgment on Saddam but, by reasserting its authority, to pass judgment on America -- on its illegitimate war, illegal occupation, barbaric justice system, etc. The argument of the trannies is that only a Hague tribunal can confer "legitimacy" -- "legitimacy" being one of those great sonorous banalities that are at the heart of what's wrong with the international order, which, in the main, confers the mantle of legitimacy on a lot of "illegitimate" thugs. Indeed, two years of a farcical trial of the Hague seem to have conferred "legitimacy" mainly on the rehabilitated Slobo. and more: bq. So the only strategic significance of Saddam's trial is whether the transnational establishment gets rehabilitated or sidelined. The argument in favor of an international tribunal is that a full accounting of Saddam's crimes will be made before the whole world. Really? Anyone who doesn't know about the mass graves and torture in Baathist Iraq is someone who's chosen not to. A lot of people fall into that camp -- for example, weapons inspector turned Saddamite shill Scott Ritter. "The prison in question was inspected by my team in January 1998," he told Time magazine, a propos one grisly institution. "It appeared to be a prison for children -- toddlers up to pre-adolescents -- whose only crime was to be the offspring of those who have spoken out politically against the regime of Saddam Hussein. It was a horrific scene. Actually, I'm not going to describe what I saw there, because what I saw was so horrible that it can be used by those who would want to promote war with Iraq, and right now I'm waging peace." bq. Ritter is rare in the extent of his depravity: He saw the horror close up and opted to turn his back. But in the interests of "peace," many others in the transnational elites did the same from a safe distance. It's too late for them to claim that the stuff they covered up now needs a full airing in an international court. and more: bq. To allow the transnational jet set to reclaim Saddam would be to reward them for their indifference to Iraqi suffering.