Tale of Two Thugs: the Doctrine of International Legalism

Saddam Hussein
and Manuel Noriega were brought down by their sponsors, becoming casualties on

the US trail of destruction.

As I detachedly watched the
cellphone video of the Butcher of Baghdad dropping through the trap door of his
gallows, I was reminded of past national debates over the natural law vs. the
code of justice.

Natural law is that body of thought
that draws a moral line in the sand across which it is accepted by civilized
society that human beings ought not to step. It assumes a universal moral
standard of accountability, shifting the burden from cultural and national
influences to individual behavior.

As the sand shifts with time and
expediency, so also does the line.

Natural law has a long history of
conflicting with American criminal jurisprudence. The principle that one is
innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a panel of peers
raises conflict over legal innocence vs. whether the accused committed the act –
often two separate and distinct matters.

The most famous merging of the
natural law with criminal justice was the Nuremberg Trials in postwar Germany.
One of the most heinous regimes in human history demanded international public
exposure of the kind that only an impartial system of inquiry could offer.

The Nuremberg Tribunal signaled a
sea change in international law. It was a breach of state sovereignty that
eventually led to the doctrine of international legalism, enabling any state to
try anyone of international crimes. To date, application of that doctrine has
largely been limited to crimes against human rights.

The level of crime necessary to
justify prosecution, however, has moved from the concrete horrors of the
extermination camps to the murky ground of which tyrant to take out next.

$300B and countless lives later,
Saddam Hussein has been captured, tried, convicted and executed for crimes
against his people. That chapter is closed, but there is a sense in the
aftermath that at $300B per thug, even the vast resources of the United States
soon would be insufficient to eradicate evil.

We are left with the inescapable
conclusion, therefore, that eradication of evil is a highly selective and
politically motivated undertaking.

The hangman's noose in Iraq
certainly was not America's finest hour. While the end was arguably justified,
unresolved questions concern the extent to which nation states may go to
eliminate thugs and at what point the guys with the white hats begin to look the
tyrant.

As I reflected on the Butcher of
Baghdad's last six feet of the journey to his eternal destiny, my mind flashed
to another troubling scene – the Florida drug trafficking trial and conviction
of kidnapped Panama strongman, Manuel Noriega. There are interesting parallels
in the two cases.

To protect its own interests in the
1970's and 1980's, the United States supported Hussein's war against Iran and
Noriega's listening posts in Panama.

Both eventually became too hot for
the US to handle. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the double agent spying by
Noriega on behalf of Fidel Castro and Daniel Ortega turned both thugs from
friends into enemies of the US.

The US, under orders of President
Bush '41, invaded Panama in December of 1989, capturing Noriega, bringing him to
Florida for trial on drug trafficking charges and sentencing him to 40 years in
prison. The cost of the invasion was some 500 Panamanian civilians dead, over
3,000 wounded and tens of thousands left homeless. 23 Americans died, and 324
were wounded.

In December of 2003, a cowering
Hussein was captured hiding in a bunker near Tikrit. At present, the human cost
has been estimated to be in excess of 100,000 civilian casualties and 3,000
American soldiers killed.

While legal scholars debate the
extent to which powerful nations can declare individuals as good or evil without
themselves treading on human rights, the stories of the two thugs end on an
astonishing note.

Hussein, the target of born-again
President George W. Bush, left this world cursing America and Persia and
promising the wrath of a vengeful God.

Noriega, the target of mainline
Episcopalian, President George Herbert Walker Bush, was baptized by immersion on
October 24, 1992, into the born-again Christian faith at the Federal Court House
in Miami. Below is his written testimony to pastor and former attorney, Clift
Brannon:

On
completing the spiritual sessions that you as a messenger of the Word of God
brought to my heart, even to my area of confinement as Prisoner of War of the
United States, I feel the necessity of adding something more to what I was able
to say to you as we parted…I can tell you with great strength and inspiration
that receiving our Lord Jesus Christ as Savior guided by you, was an emotional
event. The hours flew by without my being aware. Thank you for your time. Thank
you for your human warmth, for your constant and permanent spiritual strength
brought to bear on my mind and soul…I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of
God, who died on the cross for our sins, who arose from the grave and is on the
right hand of God the Father and who above all things is my Savior, and has
mercy on me, a sinner…

Perhaps it may be said that the
natural law applies not only to the world's thugs but also to those who have
assumed the responsibility of making the world better by ridding it of its
tyrants. Is that not the motivation for all wars?

Given enough time and opportunity,
even the best among us will leave a trail of destruction. In the case of Hussein
and Noriega, they were brought down by their sponsors, becoming casualties on
the US trail of destruction.