On Sunday, at about 4 p.m. Eastern time, CNN posted news of the sentencing in former Iraqi dictator (remember him?) Saddam Hussein’s trail for a brutal crackdown on citizens in 1982. He was sentenced to death by hanging. America is told by the Bush administration that this is “a major achievement for Iraq’s young democracy,” and “a milestone in the Iraqi people’s efforts to replace the rule of a tyrant with the rule of law.”

It is neither.

It is neither a glorious moment for democracy, nor is it a great moment for tyranny and fascism. Hussein’s death will most likely be delayed, with an indefinite time frame because of “complicated issues involved,” while various dignitaries claim that justice has been served in some obscure fashion. Hopefully Hussein will die in disgrace (as he should), but those who will put him to death, the somewhat suspect “Iraqi democracy,” will not gain any favors for having done so, nor will the act in any way console the victims of Iraqi violence present and past.

What caught my eye though, was a quotation given by Michael Scharf, law professor at Case Western University. He stated that the entire case leading to Hussein’s death sentence “was not a factual case.” According to Scharf, “What was in dispute was a legal question; that is, can someone who is a president of a country faced with terrorism and insurgency and assassination attempt, do the things that Saddam Hussein did to the people of Dujail?”

The answer for now is a legal “no,” as stated by the Iraqi courts.

However, I’d like to take a second to parallel this entire story with our own events in America. In Iraq, Hussein’s regime “razed towns and orchards, arrested, detained and tortured men, women, and children in the town [Dujail].” In Iraq, American soldiers and citizens have killed, arrested, detained or tortured men, women, and children as well as destroyed buildings and razed orchards.

And even more importantly, at home, we ourselves are dealing with a president faced with terrorism … as well as what he may call insurgency, but you and I would call rightfully protesting, and more and more of our civil liberties are slipping.

As we watch Hussein’s trial play out (those of us that even care enough to watch anymore), I hope that we can learn a lesson for our own future so that we can stem the tide of disappearing civil liberties, as well as subtly alter the course of our future by individually taking a stand against unjust authority figures.

— Pete Groh is a freshman. If you like his articles (or think he’s dumb), give him a subscription to the New York Times so he doesn’t have to watch CNN all the time.