The most important trials will be the ones conducted to redress the crimes Saddam committed against the Iraqis themselves. That is key for Iraqi society, and because there are a lot of people in Iraq who need to be reminded--and some who didn't know--the scope of how awful Saddam was. Just as the Nuremberg trials were clearly important for the social and political reconstruction of Germany, it is fair to expect that confronting Saddam's past--his legacy--will be important in helping to create a solid basis for a durable democracy in Iraq.

Whether it is an Iraqi process or a process with coalition input seems to me to be a secondary issue. You have to have a process that is impartial and legally above reproach, and ideally it would be an Iraqi-only process, but it could be some sort of hybrid--Iraqis up front and in the lead, being coached or assisted by coalition figures. As for international involvement, there are a whole host of people and nations who have legitimate claims against Saddam, but the reluctance of international jurists to apply the death penalty is a potential time bomb. My sense of what is just contemplates that there are some crimes that are so awful that the death penalty is appropriate--and, hey, I don't want to make any wild claims here, but I would just venture that Saddam might fit that definition, and I bet that a lot of Iraqis would agree with me. To thwart the Iraqi sense of justice in order to preserve the niceties of western European justice seems a bit perverse to me.

The trial is bound to be a show--but a show that is much more likely to have salutary effects, on balance. Reckoning with Saddam--with the nature of his regime, and with the rather unfortunate nature of many regimes in the region--is only a good thing. It will be very interesting to see how a Saddam trial plays out in the court of public opinion in Europe, too. And there are probably going to be embarrassing moments for the American government, and for western European governments as well - we tolerated this guy for far too long. But so be it. Admission of past error is the basis of future wisdom.

Thomas Donnelly is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and founder member of the Project for the New American Century. This is Mr. Donnelly's section in a set of comments published in the Guardian (London).