Principles in Practice: The Blog of the Objective Standard

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

A Folly Well Examined

Posted by Craig Biddle at 3:53 PM

Here is an excellent letter to the editor from Elan Journo of the Ayn Rand Institute:

Dear Editor:

As Saddam Hussein's trial resumes, he will face further charges for slaughtering thousands of Kurds—but Hussein deserves no regular trial. A trial that presumes him innocent is a travesty of justice. Hussein is not a private citizen, whose guilt requires proof in an objective court of law, but a dictator whose incontestable evil was manifest to any rational observer of his tyranny.

Hussein deserves to be definitively condemned as evil and then executed—immediately or after any valuable information is extracted from him. Prior to his execution, there can be a legitimate reason to hold a public hearing—not to establish his guilt, but to fully expose his secretive dictatorship's myriad vile deeds. Such a hearing would acknowledge that as dictator he is responsible for all crimes committed by his regime.

Instead of endorsing the trial of Saddam Hussein, the United States should withdraw its moral sanction from such corrupt proceedings.

Elan Journo

Copyright ©2006 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Spot on, Mr. Journo. Hussein’s trial belongs on the pages of The Onion.

Labels: Foreign Policy and War, Individual Rights and Law