One Man’s Freedom Fighter…

“Congratulations! You are in a cage, Saddam,” witness Ghafour Hassan Abdullah said as he stared at the ousted president.

Saddam listened silently but lost his temper when a lawyer described Iraqi Kurdish rebels as freedom fighters. “You are agents of Iran and Zionism! We will crush your heads!” he shouted.

We will crush your heads! Remind you of anyone? Incidentally, none of my trials featured exchanges like that.

Meanwhile, Havana, Cuba is hosting a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement, the world’s second-most inaptly named entity, just below the “Democratic Peoples’ Republic” of Korea. Both entities are asking to redefine a term on which they speak with some authority, but not the moral kind:

Iran, Syria, North Korea and more than 100 other nations are pushing to broaden the world’s definition of “terrorism” to include the U.S. occupation of Iraq and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

Converging on Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba for a summit this week, members of the Nonaligned Movement complain of a double standard: powerful nations like the United States and Israel decide for the world who the terrorists are, but face no punishment for their own acts of aggression.

Here are just a few of the insidious conspirators who continue to smother the aspirations of the Iraqi people under a blanket of terror. Thus, we reach a new milestone principle of international law: henceforth, one who defends a freely elected government is a “terrorist;” one who carries bombs into crowds of the voters who elect it is a “freedom fighter.” Those who pronounce judgment will have earned this moral authority by intentionally targeting some civilians, and then seeking refuge among others.

And to think that we could have been friends will all of these people if George W. Bush weren’t president. God, why do they hate us?
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