Goodbye Saddam
I've been a supporter of the death penalty for many, many years. I'm well aware of the fact that it does not perform as a deterrent and that in the U.S. the appeals proceedings make it more expensive to put a murderer to death than to imprison, feed and cloth them for the rest of their lives, but I've always been of the opinion that (1) the punishment was appropriate and deserved and (2) the world was better off without them. So it came as a surprise to no one more than myself when my reaction to learning of Saddam's execution was to become very upset.
I've heard all sorts of stupid reasons why Saddam shouldn't have been executed — his followers might free him, the remaining trials won't have as much media coverage now — but the best reason is the most obvious: Civil War.
This was an action that reverberated loudly throughout the Sunni community. Some say things will calm down after they get over their initial rage and realize Saddam really isn't ever coming back to power. Others suspect that now many Sunnis see this as the extinguishment of any hope they will regain their former place of privelege within Iraqi society, and that now that they really feel they have nothing left to lose they will support the fight against the coalition-backed government more openly.
I'm not going to go off on a tangent about the "good" done by convicted killers who "regret" their actions, other than to point out there has been some such good and that whether or not one ever can believe a killer truly regrets their crimes or whether they can ever truly be redeemed has no bearing on the fact of what good they have accomplished from their prisons, however small.
As a side note one must also consider how many countries simply cannot seem to support Democracy and have historically only been stable under oppressive governments. Westerners decry the actions of men like Augusto Pinochet and Slobodon Milosovich, both also passed in 2006 (of natural causes, as best can be known) but both men are considered heroes by many of the common citizens of their respective nations, including people who did not benefit in any measurable way during their tenure as heads of state.
In parts of Romania Vlad Dracula, the infamous inspiration for the famous vampire novel, is considered a national hero. To most historians he was a brutal dictator who ate lunch while watching his soldiers impale captured enemies while still alive, and left their corpses to rot on stakes surrounding his castle. To the locals his brutal methods were the only thing that kept them from being conquered by invaders of other lands and cultures.
This is not to say that the actions of such brutal leaders are justified, but one must keep the perspective that they were men in extraordinary circumstances and they made their decisions accordingly. Whether their actions are categorized as mistakes of judgement or deliberate misdeeds I think it fairer to imprison under reasonable conditions than to pass judgement and punishment of death. Not because of any nonsense where we "become" murderers by executing them, but simply because there is no benefit to killing them.
I don't know, maybe it doesn't hold up across the board. Clearly Hitler had a lot of supporters too and I don't think very many outside of Iran would reflect on the histories and say he was a hero of the people. And there's a certain blind Cleric who I think would have been better off killed rather than imprisoned. Maybe the death penalty is necessary in some cases and I'm just having an emotional reaction to seeing a sad, old man with his hands cuffed behind his back allow himself to be prepped for his exectution with a resigned look about him.
Keep in mind though that I don't tend to be very sentimental and I'm well aware of the extent of the mass-murder, torture, thievery and what-have-you committed by this old man. Still, it is one thing to be killed in a firefight like his sons, it is another to be safely imprisoned where he can do no harm and then go with dignity to his own hanging.
[coolplayer]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyeIHSrA27Y&mode=related&search=[/coolplayer]
If you feel the need, you can find the moment of his hanging on YouTube. I've chosen not to include it here. Before his execution he called for an end to civil conflict. Of course it is easy (and correct) to question his sincerity, but if just one person took him seriously and put down their rifle then he did some actual good in spite of his motivations. We will never know if he would have continued to perform actions with positive impacts were he to remain imprisoned for life, but we can be fairly certain that even his complete inaction in prison would have been more positive than the reaction of the Sunni populance to his execution.
And so it is that I have to question the wisdom of executing a prisoner, no matter how evil his actions as a free man. Even when we can confidently say that he deserves execution there are so many other factors that I no longer feel comfortable supporting the action. And whatever your own personal opinion on the subject, I hope I've at least got you to put a little more thought into the matter than you've given it in a while.
May the Iraqi people extricate themselves from the hell they and we have conspired to create for them and may our soldiers come home safely.
Welcome to 2007, maybe this year will be better than the last.
- one
