Saddam Hussein

[iainjclark]

Saddam Hussein has been hanged.

I don't really feel intellectually qualified to enter into a debate on all the arguments for and against capital punishment in a modern society, but I do know that I oppose it. Part of me actually feels naive for holding this viewpoint, but there it is. It seems to me morally reprehensible and hypocritical to murder one man as a punishment for the murder of others. It's the revenge of the mob, not justice; it's about satisfying people's instinctive uncivilised need for a merciless and final act of retribution, not about holding onto moral certainties. I realise that this practice is legal in some US states, and I also realise that Iraq is a different culture with its own values and laws, but that doesn't stop me from finding it abhorrent.

What really brought this home to me was watching footage of Saddam Hussein on the news yesterday evening and realising that this man who was at that second alive and well would soon be murdered in a planned, state sanctioned killing. Worse still, he would not be killed in a humane fashion but be hanged by the neck until dead. For the actions this dictator took and those he sanctioned he deserved punishment¹ - to never see daylight again - but I don't believe that he deserved to die, or that anyone had the right to kill him, or that his killing should be celebrated.

Rant over. I didn't intend to post about this at all, but I found it more shocking than I expected and I want to record that fact.

¹ He was, as Eddie Izzard would say, a mass-murdering fuckhead

Comments

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this.

I've been trying to marshal my reactions to this event into some form of coherence, because I wanted to say *something*; I just wasn't quite sure what. But I find that you've actually said it for me, in pretty much the exact terms I was thinking - both my attitude to towards capital punishment in general, and my reaction to the execution of Saddam as a specific act.

[sieuesie.livejournal.com]

My overwhelming emotion about this event is sadness. Thats not very intellectual either. I can't help thinking that this isn't the right punishment. I am also aware that the demonisation and execution of one man isn't going to change an entire regime. In this I may be naive too.

[immortalradical.livejournal.com]

If the horror of Saddam's regime could be found in the cold-blooded, calculated nature of its murders as much as in their volume, there's a sad continuity about images of Saddam surrounded by simpering state functionaries who are tying fabric and rope around his neck. Regimes like Saddam's corrupt the polities they rule, and the nature of the West's invasion and occupation has hardly rejected the lack of respect for human life which characterises that corruption, at work every day on the burning streets of Baghdad. I don't find sadness the naive reaction to this event; it's a cheap shot, but for me Bush's is the naive reaction.

[ajp.livejournal.com]

Well, I certainly agree that the death penalty isn't right. As a point of principle, I don't think that anyone has a right to cold-bloodedly take a life; regardless of what has been done by that person.

I can understand, but not condone, the celebration of those who were so oppressed by Saddam's regime.