Editor,
It is amazing to the point of incredulity that this country is determined to speed ahead with blindfolded eyes into its dire demise. People and politicians continue to follow a proven illegitimate and incompetent leader into an ever-greater catastrophe.
President Bush's reckless policies have wounded, maimed and destroyed tens of thousands of American soldiers and murdered more than 3,000 of them. The "30,000, more or less" Iraqi citizens Bush admittedly ordered killed with his war of aggression - itself a violation of international law for which Nazi leaders were hanged - have grown into more than 650,000 civilian deaths, if we may believe the highly esteemed British medical journal the Lancet.
Last November, Congress received the order from the American people to change the political course drastically. Yet instead of long overdue impeachment procedures, all we may expect is a perverse demonstration of national unity during the next State of the Union address.
Who is afraid of Bush? Is there any crime and blunder left this man has not yet committed? If Bush can mislead and wreck this and other countries, anyone can do the job. Why stick with him?
The latest criminal offense symptomatic of Bush's tyrannical mind-set is the hanging of Saddam Hussein, clearly orchestrated by the White House. The rushed execution highlighted the string of judicial violations that dragged the Iraqi despot to his premature death: the lack of judicial impartiality, overt judicial prejudgment, substantial violations of fundamental legal principles, the murder of three defense lawyers and the open unfairness of the trial, robbing the accused of basic legal rights, ridiculed justice and even generated sympathy for the former Iraqi dictator after the grisly pictures and voices emerged from the death chamber.
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This murder prevented justice to countless victims who suffered under Hussein's genocidal campaigns - Shiites, Kurds and Iranians whom he gassed with America's financial, logistical and political assistance. This American complicity in Iraq's crimes against humanity may well explain why Hussein was prevented from facing charges for his worst atrocities. The trial would have implicated Reagan, Rumsfeld and the first President Bush.
Hussein was hanged for ordering the killing of 148 Shiite Iraqis in 1982. If the same legal standards were applied to our current president, he could be hanged tomorrow. As governor of Texas, Bush had surpassed this number with the execution of 152 prisoners. The torture memoranda, the Downing Street memo and the mounting death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan would easily strengthen the case against Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
Although Martin Luther King Jr. would have exempted himself temporarily from pacifism to fight against the evils of Hitler, as he said in his famous sermon from 1967, "Why I oppose the war in Vietnam," death penalty opponents should not go the same route and take exception for Bush, a strong believer in capital punishment. We know from Bush's vengeful mind-set that if his own case fell upon his desk, he would have to heed the furious calls for his own hanging.
We must leave behind Bush's Wild West manners veiled in Orwellian speech. The barbaric execution of Hussein at Camp Justice - a name I now find ironic - must not be matched with that of Bush, however justified it may seem to some. A fair trial is enough to bring peace to this world. Such a demonstration of uncorrupted justice would truly appease the world. It could even restore Bush to a better level of humanity while he contemplates his fate in The Hague.
Joachim L. Oberst
UNM faculty
