Saturday, December 30, 2006

Saddam Hussein...Justice or Revenge?

It's hard to look at the way Saddam Hussein's death sentence was carried out and look at it as "justice". Not just because he was hung but the additional initial reports of chanting and dancing around his dead body lend more to the idea of revenge than carrying out justice for the victims of those who have died. Brutality and hatred creating brutality and hatred isn't really justice. Disrespect of a corpose even Saddam's corpse will breed more hatred, more desires for revenge.

Here in the US, hanging is not the way the majority of death penality cases are handled, nor is it done with people chanting or dancing around the dead body. While I'm not a fan of the death penalty in the majority of the cases in the US when it is carried thru it is done humanely, because it is supposed to be about justice.

On April 13, 1961, U.S. Army Private John A. Bennett was hanged after being convicted of rape and attempted murder, he appears to be the last person to face a death penalty by the Army by hanging.

Lest we convince ourselves we are totally more civilized...

Washington and New Hampshire still retain hanging as an option. Delaware changed in 1996 to lethal injection, except for those convicted prior to 1986 who were sentenced to hanging, convicts were allowed to choose lethal injection. Since the hanging of Billy Bailey, no Delaware prisoner meets this requirement. In New Hampshire if it be found to be impractical to carry out the punishment of death by lethal injection, then the condemned will be hanged.

In 1996, Billy Bailey was hung, and it had been 50 years since Delaware had hung someone.

Yet again we go back to the manner in which the death penalty was served and the care that was taken even when the death was to be by hanging...

With as many people as have died realistically if it would have all ended by hanging Saddam then you could do the whole "the ends justify the means" type of a scenario. However very few seem to be feeling that way.

As an update, I hope after discovering this guy was totally full of it:

Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie. "He was a broken man," al-Rubaie said. "He was afraid. You could see fear in his face."

Let's hope the US never believes anything that particular advisor...

5 comments:

roman said...

Well the way I see this is kind of simple - most families in Iraq have deep roots that I'm pretty sure spread throughout the country itself. Knowing that some of the people stood and showed respect towards him while others danced in joy although understandable in both groups I believe it should of been kept aside until after the body was properly buried. Showing one's response to such an event whether it's silence or singing should be viewed as nothing more than a form of relief. No-one will ever know the true amount of damage his regime did back then, but I can tell you one thing though - families never forget. The title I guess for now should read "Justified Revenge" until we get the complete outcome of this event.

Unknown said...

Considering our two hour debate on the differences in our beliefs on the death penalty and the whole issue of what does killing Saddam really accomplish given our nation's part in his history as a dictatorship...I think you know I disagree with you.

Except for families don't forget which is why we are facing many of the problems we are in the middle east right now. Some of them will never forget what our government has done to them either. Yet their desire for revenge is something that we call terrorism...

Anonymous said...

Hi Lisa, haven't posted for a while due to this beta blogger login thing...seems to be working again.

I feel this hanging was a very bad thing for both Iraq, and the US. Also possibly for every country the US tries to help with democracy in the future. First, they should not have rushed through the appeals. Secondly, they should have finished trying him with the Kurds while he was alive. Lastly, and most importantly, this all should have been an international court similar to Milosevik. This sets a very bad precident on how to deal with heads of state in unstable governments, and will encourage more desparate and extreme behaviors in future diplomacy efforts.

Unknown said...

I agree with you Aaron, and I think they finally have fixed the beta blogger issues, I wasn't able to comment on your blog as well as a few others for quite some time.

:-)

Hooda Thunkit (Dave Zawodny) said...

Both...

That's the best that we can do at this point in our evolution...