In "Henry
VI, Part II," Act IV Dick the Butcher blurts out one of the
Bard's most misquoted and misunderstood lines: "The first
thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."
Before everyone
fed up with our ABA-infested Congress or run-amok litigation shouts,
"Amen, off with their heads," I recommend a quick scan
of the text. Shakespeare isn't making an Elizabethan lawyer joke.
Anarchy and vicious street violence serve the purposes of Jack
Cade, Dick the Butcher's aspiring fuhrer. The Rule of Law impedes
Cade's rebellion -- and lawyers, judges and juries embody the
law.
Cade speaks
the language of populist rebellion, but his "self-determination"
is ultimately a terrible pun. He will dispense with money, feed
the population, dress everyone in the same clothing. But his goal
is power and personal rule. Just before Dick the Butcher's call
for mass judicial murder, Cade states his intended policy goal:
He wants the people to "worship me their lord."
By cracky,
Saddam subscribes to that political philosophy. Remember the term
"cult of personality"? Hitler and Stalin were 20th century
practitioners of self-worship and state terror. Saddam managed
to keep his franchise until the early 21st.
Shakespearean
characters might mock the nonsense of legalese, but the Bard backed
the Rule of Law. The Rule of Man degenerates to whim. When whim
combines with paranoia, megalomania and weapons, the result is
mass murder.
With fits
and starts, the Rule of Law has tackled and handcuffed Baghdad's
Butcher. Saddam still doesn't quite believe it. He's still fighting
for the Rule of Me. When Saddam's whims governed Iraq, the results
included a beggared Iraqi economy, wars with Kuwait and Iran,
and mass graves in Kurdistan and southern Iraq. Saddam's fascist
regime not only poisoned Iraqi society, its cruelty embedded the
human emotional poisons of bitterness, distrust and constant fear.
The Butcher
of Baghdad relied on murder to obtain and maintain power. Terror
was -- and remains -- Saddam's chief policy tool. The United Nation's
Oil for Food scandal signals the Million Man Murderer is also
adept at bribery.
It appears
Saddam has calculated that lawyers and judges are expendable --
literally. One defense lawyer has been murdered, with Saddam's
pals the likely trigger men. The day before his trial was set
to reconvene, Iraqi police arrested a Saddamite hit squad carrying
orders to kill Rahid Juhi, one of Iraq's pre-eminent jurists and
the judge who directed the pre-trial investigation of Saddam.
Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, one of Saddam's former VPs, signed the
assassination writ. Ibrahim is running the Saddamist side of the
Iraqi civil war.
And civil
war this is, with Saddam's ancien regime attempting
to terrorize the Iraq populace and pave the way for an eventual
return to power. I've argued since late 2003 that the Iraq war
became a civil war sometime in the summer of 2003. That's when
former regime elites, Ibrahim among them, began their terror campaign.
In mid-2004, according to the Baghdad rumor mill, Ibrahim still
had access to tens, and perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars
in hidden cash.
Free Iraq
is defeating Saddam's holdout fascists and al-Qaida's theo-fascists.
Beating al-Qaida means giving al-Qaida the opportunity to beat
itself. That's happening. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's attacks on three
Jordanian hotels has produced an enormous political victory for
Washington and its anti-terror coalition.
The harsh
evil of al-Qaida is front and center in Sunni Arab media, demonstrating
unequivocally that al-Qaida is Murder Incorporated, and the majority
of its victims are Muslims.
Al-Qaida's
biggest recruiting tool was -- and is -- the political failure
of the Arab Muslim world. In this dysfunctional world, tyranny
and terror reinforce one another, with the people of the Middle
East the inevitable victims.
The democratic
judicial process holding Saddam accountable for his murders provides
a stark, confidence-raising contrast with Saddam's regime and
al-Qaida. The era of the tyrant and terrorist is over in the Middle
East.
Saddam can
try to kill his lawyers, but he won't succeed in killing the Rule
of Law in Free Iraq.
