A stern view from TPM Reader JG …
Reading your detailed post on the sorry spectacle of the Hussein execution and the pathetic responses by the right wing bloggers, it struck me that this is a repeating theme for this crew. They don’t really believe in democracy, they don’t really believe in the rule of law, or in impartial justice. Every Bush effort, and every Republican effort, since the Iraq war got started has the same touches on it as this sorry spectacle, rush things to fit political time tables, ride over the rule of law, chaos, incomptence, and the country looking worse at the end of it. Some of your readers don’t understand the problem, but it’s the same problem as what’s going on in Gitmo and god knows where else, it’s all of a piece. Rule of law isn’t some neat extra cool thing that democratic countries came up with because its nice and convenient, it’s like oxygen, entirely necessary. It’s what gives the entire process of justice something more than simple bloodletting. We see the consequences of a lack of respect for the rule of law in the savegery of Saddam’s execution, do we imagine that these thugs are any less savage to anybody else they deem “guilty” but is actually simple an innocent from the wrong tribe? The longer this thing goes on, the more clear it becomes that the current Iraqi government is the child of its Republican fathers in every meaningful way. Are we suppossed to imagine that a (Republican) government which is so clearly incompetent, dangerious, savage when it can get away with it, elevates politcal theatre above actual results, and plays hard to its base somehow created a government that does the *same exact things* in Iraq (where those tendencies have even worse results) by *accident* or *coincidence*? No. The Iraqi government is as much an import from the US as the US solders sustaining it are.
I mainly agree on the issue of the provenance of the new Iraqi regime. But I’d say it’s married the worst of what they have to offer with the worst from us. And that ain’t a pretty picture. Or video.
