Strange Reservations
Having been apparently untroubled by Saddam's penchant for throwing women into rape rooms and feeding people into paper shredders, the "European community" is now deeply concerned that Saddam Hussein will be executed after having enjoyed more due process than he ever dreamed of providing for his victims.
posted by LadybugUSA at 4:59 AM
3 Comments:
What Saddam did to others is Saddam's nature, what we do to him is our's. I believe that the world would be better place with Saddam dead, but that it will not be a better place for our taking him into a room and hanging him. It would entertain me greatly to learn that he died in agony from some horrible disease, but I will take no pleasure from knowing he died at the hand of another. He deserves to be dead, but we should not become killers to make him that way. I know it's a contradiction, but I don't feel the same about all military actions.
To believe he deserves death is as much to say you want to make it so. You carry the same malicious intent as does his executioner, only he carries it out.
We have a local talk show dude who, when John Wayne Gacy was finally being put to death, lead a rally outside the prison in a celebration of his death. I found such attitudes abhorent. There is no joy in putting to death a villain, only relief that he can no longer commit more crimes. To permit such criminals to live after being found guilty of their crimes, is to diminish the value of the lives of their victims. Execution for such is totally justified and speaks to our level of concern for innocent life, that we so punish those who take it in such murderous ways. The world is a better place for the death of such as Hussein, and it is better for having in existence those who do their duty in executing his sentence. Thus to all despots and tyrants who do not turn from their evil ways.
Gee Marshall, if you know what I think so well, I guess it's pointless for me to imagine I really believe any different than you say I do. Not.
I don't buy that respect for, or debt to the victims excuse. When we take a man out of cage and kill him, I might be a form justice, but we still become murderers. And there are other forms of justice. Rudolph Hess got one of them. If I thought for a second that offing SH carried the certainty that his death means one less future innocent death than does his rotting in prison, I'd be more than happy to do him myself. That prize is worth becoming a murderer for. But that's not the case here, or in death row's anywhere. That is not to say that I don't think we shouldn't have given him to the Iraqis just because we knew they were going to wring his worthless neck. I think that would have caused more deaths.
If you think I'm a pacifist, you're wrong. When it comes to self defense, or the hypothetical "shoot or the guy will get away to kill again", the bullets are going to start flying.
I reject the notion that making SH dead has anything to do with a higher moral ground or purpose. A death is at best a lesser evil, and an un-necessary death is never a lesser evil.
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