What do you think when you hear the news that Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death? Do you:
- Fear the violent reaction to come from Sunnis?
- Volunteer to bring the rope?
- Think hanging’s too good for him?
- Think capital punishment is always wrong?
Here’s the way things like this strike me: I believe capital punishment is wrong, but I also believe
violence can be justified under many circumstances — in the defense of innocents, for instance. Also, he certainly fits in the "if anybody deserves it…" category. Of course, he can’t hurt anybody in prison, as long as he’s held securely enough. But as long as he lives, especially with his defiant attitude, he offers hope to his ex-followers for a restoration to power and privilege (particularly with so many Americans crying for a pullout). And if he’s dead, he’s a martyr to the Ba’ath cause. But is there anyone else those thugs can rally around with the "appeal" he has to them?
In other words, I find it hard to reach a conclusion. What do y’all think?
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Not only does Saddam have to be executed in public, but done so in a way that Muslims believe will prevent his going to heaven as a martyr. Every Muslim killed by our troops has to be soiled in that manner.
Points 2 and 3 sound good to me. Personally, I think somebody should have his weapon go off “by accident” when they found him in that spider hole.
What I think of is Robert Arial’s cartoon in the paper this morning, and it was classic. Actually, we’d probably be better off if he had to take the country back over.
Herb, he was responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people, between Iran and Kuwait wars, and internal slaughter of innocents. When he poison gassed the Kurds, he killed 5000 and permanently disabled 10,000 others. Surprising comment from you.
Dave, according to that logic, we should have executed Stalin, and a host of others as well. No, Saddam was not a nice man, not at all. I have no doubt that he got what he deserved. But he, as a secular Muslim, keep the lid on the various groups that are now at each other’s throats. When you take out somebody, you need to have an idea of what you are going to put it in its place. Why did half of the Christians in Iraq have to flee for their lives since 2003? Why have they escaped to Syria and other surrounding countries — people that are needed to rebuild the country and its infrastructure? Christians were protected, to a degree, under Saddam. They are no longer.
If a relatively Christians having to temporarily flee the remnants of Saddam’s death squads is the trade off for stopping his extermination of 100,000 other people a year, that is a small trade off.
Our toppling Saddam is not what forced the Christians to flee. His murdering followers are the cause. They must also be exterminated.
And we should have killed Stalin, if we could have captured him. How nice that would have been, to have not had a Cold War and nuclear arms race, and the 65,000,000 people killed by communism after World War II.
Hey, let Saddam appeal and draw this out, after all it’s a GREAT distraction from questions like:
Where’s Osama?
Why are the Saudis still pushing Wahabism?
Who are the Taliban selling opium to?
Where’s Osama?
Isn’t the timing of this judgement just an amazing coincidence?
Isn’t televised death by hanging so much more civilized than televised death by decapitation?
Where’s Osama?
What’s the difference between beating someone in a war and winning a war?
Who was the mastermind behind the attacks in Madrid and London?
Where’s Osama?
And the clear winner, paraphrased from the words of President Nukyouler himself:
Is our children safer?
Ossama is irrelevant, dead or sick in a cave.
Spanish security sources are said to have warned four months ago that Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, a 47-year-old Syrian, had identified Britain as a likely target.
So what?
Amazing how Democrats claim that “stupid” President Bush was able to control the timing of the verdict in Saddam’s trial.
Our children are a lot safer than they were under Clinton… not that Democrats care.
The president told a story a while back about metting with some Iraqi nationals who asked him “why have a trial and why not just execute Saddam” Bush explained that the ‘rule of law’ was the reason and noted how hard this difficult concept will be to teach to this young democracy…however the prisoner detainee bill that Bush signed a few Tuesdays ago means that Saddam Hussien, terrorist in chief, has recieved more trial rights than anyone the U.S. Presidents deems an enemy combatant will have under the U.S. ‘rule of law,’ am I the only one who sees a bitter irony in this? For the record Saddam is the poster child for why having the death penatly available is a good thing.
The Democrats? Who cares about the Democrats?? They abdicated their role as loyal opposition by failing to insist on oversight. Do you blame parties for this mess or the individuals who made the bad decisions? I look at the individuals who disgraced our nation by the string of stupid errors like “Mission Accomplished!” When our “leaders” (of either party!) are such cowards they use phrases like “mistakes were made” instead of “I made the wrong decision and we need to fix it.” those people need to be removed from their office immediately.
The Saddam verdict is a sideshow. It does a better job of conveying “might makes right” than anything else. Better to ask what it does to hurt us rather than how it helps…is Kim Jong Il LESS likely to build nukes now? Is Osama going deeper into the cave (by the way, glad to here he’s out of the picture now, I had missed that!)?
Brad, to answer your questions:
1. You mean they might get more violent? More violent than suicide bombing?
2. No, there are too many deluded people in that line already.
3. Dead is dead. Any choice but the quickest just makes his executioners deliberate torturers.
4. I would drop him in the hole next to Manuel Noriega, Bush I’s captured foreign leader. They would make a nice set.
If our process was to remove every leadership group that made a mistake we would have musical chairs perpetually. Every president we ever had has made mistakes. We are not a banana republic. Why does the left hate democracy so much in Iraq? Officials who lie under oath DO need to be removed. That is the difference.
I like it that Saddam has been found guilty and sentenced to death. And I especially like the timing of it all…just perfect to take the last minute distractions like Haggards’ resignation off the table and out of the news. I don’t know what kind of last second bombshell democrats may try to spring today to suppress republican turnout, but Saddams’ conviction/sentence will certainly mute whatever it may be. I think many political pundits, pollsters and talking heads will be stunned, humiliated and discredited by what happens at the polls tomorrow. I predict no change of leadership in either house or senate, and possibly some gains in republican majorities. Ed
I don’t generally believe in capital punishment, but certainly in cases like Saddam, or Hitler, or Stalin, or Idi Amin, that conviction is severely tested. The idea of him languishing in a prison for years stripped of the luxury and power he once had, however, would be appealing.
Saddam, dead or alive, will be forever a textbook lesson in geopolitics as America learned it, to wit: Be careful what you wish for.
Saddam, left alive, as you said, would offer lingering hope to the diehards that he would one day be set free, be forcibly freed or escape to fight and resume control.
Saddam dead would put an end to that possibility and give closure to countless Iraqis that suffered under his regime. It might even give new impetus to a peaceful solution to the sectarian violence.
I have no qualms about seeing Iraqi justice work and imposing the death sentence. When you get right down to it, it’s their country, their justice system and their solution, not ours, which makes it none of our business.
“When you get right down to it, it’s their country, their justice system and their solution, not ours, which makes it none of our business.”
I agree, Robert, but any reasonable observer would have to say that the US observes that principle very selectively. When it suits our geopolitical goals, we wave that banner of self-determination proudly. When it does not suit us, then the phrase “it’s their country…none of our business” magically disappears.
It’s their country only because we gave it back to them, just like we did to Germans, Japanese, and the former captives behind the Iron Curtain.
Ed, your prediction didn’t work out too well, did it? I guess the old rule still holds – the stupider someone is, the less accurate his observations and predictions turn out to be.
This may be actually good for Pelosi run things and remind everyone just how radically un-American she and most top Democrats really are.
Lee, I hope you’re right. Christians have often had to pay the price for the sake of other people, and I’m not talking about their failures (e.g. Haggard). But we also have the prospect of a destabilized region, and continued suffering for millions of people. We are not at the end of this “tradeoff.”
It should also be kept in mind that it is easy to talk about “tradeoffs” when one is not personally involved in the least.
Lee, a majority of America voted for Democratic members of Congress, so how are Democrats “un-American”? Are you saying that Americans are un-American?
Actually, with the low turnout, a small minority of people elected their representatives, Democrat or Republican or independent.
How are Democrats un-American?
* Helping the USSR
* Supporting Castro, Sandanistas, Aristide and other tinhorn dictators
* Gutting agencies of talent by forcing out experienced workers to make room for minorities and women to receive social promotions (NASA, FDA, NIH)
* Lying about Saddam and other terrorists not being a threat when Bush is in office, after years of crying about Iraq’s WMD
* Wanting to implement European socialist medical systems, higher taxes, repeal of tax cuts, savings plans and retirement for non-government employees.
Lee, why don’t the majority of Americans see things the same way you do?
Are the majority of Americans stupid?
Are they crazy?
But if you are smarter than the majority of Americans, then why is South Carolina, a state where your views are so widely shared, one of the most backward, impoverished, shiftless, ignorant, dependent states in America?
If you are right and the rest of America is wrong, why hasn’t South Carolina ever been able to build its society on anything other than racism and handouts?
Why did Democrats almost unanimously sponsor the 1998 legislation authorizing war on Iraq “to neutralize its weapons of mass destruction” and “its upport for terrorists”?
Mary, you didn’t dispute any of the evidence I gave of anti-American Democrats. You can’t.
Did you fight in Clinton’s wars in Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Somalia, Macedonia, etc? Some of them are still dragging on. You can enlist now. Pick one.
if not wrong america is also invading many countries for the sake of oil ,but acting as peace keepers,thus how many soldiers and innocent people died in iraq,afganisthan etc… is it fuelling terrorism
Death of Saddam, Degradation of Americans
BAGHDAD, Iraq – Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm. He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of d…
I have mixed feelings about hanging Saddam. It is not that he deserved, because the man is as evil as the devil himself. I just wonder if it was too good for him.
I guess that maybe they should have done something crueler, like chopping off a finger a day, then a toe, then an arm, etc., but that would put us in the same league as him.
I want to see him hung where do i find it