Rule of law

It's painfully clear that Team Bush is hell-bent to go after Saddam Hussein, and will be trotting out all sorts of evidence to aid in the case of convincing the American people why the U.S. needs to bloodily topple the Iraqi leader. However, Congress, ready to take a break from passing that pesky Medicare legislation, is holding hearings on invading Iraq, specifically looking to open a thoughtful dialogue about the best way to rip a country apart and destabilize the world.

But the pundits and the politicians are seeing this problem the wrong way around. Going after Saddam with a military strike on Iraq is like taking a hammer to a fly. Dismantling a country, throwing it into instability over the charge that one person may be developing weapons of mass destruction seems as if it will do a lot more harm than good. What about what happens after Saddam is removed? What if Saddam isn't removed? What if the next guy in charge of Iraq eventually becomes our enemy and goes develops nuclear weapons? What's the price the U.S. is willing to pay in blood and bodies? And does anyone else think that Saddam isn't reading all these reports of invasion and overthrow (which may be just a massive information campaign and something far more insidious is underway) and is gearing up for battle?

Saddam is a wily foe, but he's also a criminal. Years ago, he gassed to death some of his own people. Why not go after him for that? Al Capone was brought down on tax evasion. Why not drag Saddam in front of a world court for crimes against humanity? Having the U.S. be a team player and joining a global effort in putting Hussein in the dock could only improve the world's poor opinion of the U.S. A day in court could save lives, infrastructure, and the potential burden of saying in Iraq for years to stabilize the place. It also could prevent a Middle East fracturing into a million different pieces, which I fear is what Team Bush may want after all, because when your enemies are divided, they're weaker. And it's easier to go in, set up shop and take their oil.