Saddam's sentence

No matter how The Monk would attempt to analyze it, the death sentence for Saddam is justice. He is a mass murderer, a megalomaniac, a mini-Stalin. His closest parallel is Ceaucescu, and The Monk has little problem with the summary execution that the Romania dictator received in 1989 after a show trial.

This trial would have been Saddam's show, if the latest judge had let that happen. Fortunately, a real verdict was rendered. And the importance of that should be obvious:

The verdict reminds the world of his crimes, specifically the 1982 murder of 148 Shiites in Dujail, which in its systematic revenge recalls Hitler's slaughter at the Czech town of Lidice during World War II. That the U.S. and its allies were willing and able to depose, and his countrymen then try and punish, a national leader who ordered those crimes is a warning to other tyrants. The U.N. routinely deplores the Saddams of the world but never has the will to act against them--whether in Rwanda, Darfur, Kosovo, Bosnia, Cambodia, or Kurdistan. In Iraq, the U.S. finally acted.

And our "allies"? In a typical response, the EU deplored the death sentence. Sixty years ago, when Western Europe's moral clarity was not fogged by unrealistic idealism, its leaders acted more forcefully -- hanging Nazis from the nearest yard-arm. The reaction in EU-land is just another manifestation of how those nations have lost their moral compass.