Executions

[fabrisse]

My stand against the death penalty is visceral.

If society is willing to kill an individual, how can society take the moral high ground and say the individuals within it are forbidden to kill?

Tonight Saddam Hussein was executed. Few doubt he was guilty of the crimes. There are more trials that will not be held on other charges -- including Kurdish genocide -- because he has already paid the ultimate price.

This may or may not make him into a martyr to the Sunni Muslims of Iraq. His trial may or may not have been fair -- though any appearance of impropriety didn't have any chance to be investigated.

I have no doubt in my mind that this man inflicted his own death penalty on thousands of people.

And yet my gorge rose when the Special Report broke in on Jeopardy. The only (whatever atheists call it) prayer that I offered was for his soul to be treated appropriately in any afterlife that may come.

But as a human being, I can't help feeling that this was the wrong thing to do.

If this country is trying to demonstrate that representative democracy and the rule of law are better than dictatorship, then how is killing the dictator going to prove it?

Comments

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

Killing someone for a hideous crime seems to be the general consensus of the immature, violent drones who've nothing better to do than focus on the one they blame, or are *told* hate.

Killing does nothing but make the proponents of capital punishment feel better. And Hussein was a convenient, guilty scapegoat in a long line of convenient guilty scapegoats--their crimes deserved punishment, but death is not punishment. It only makes those drones who believe in capital punishment feel as if "justice" has been served when it's served nothing of the sort. Justice would have been isolated confinement for the rest of his life. No preaching his poison, no contact with the outside world or other prison inmates. Isolation is the only form of punishment a man like that deserved and giving him death wasn't it. It only gave him what he wanted: all those virgins and a martyr complex for his followers.

I'm not bothered that he was killed. What bothers me is that trial and sentencing should have been carried out by those he harmed, and it certainly wasn't the US. That honor, or curse, belonged to his people as well as the people of Kuwait.

I could have posted about this issue myself, but didn't. Figured I'd just comment here instead. ;)

[aizjanika.livejournal.com]

{{{hugs}}}

ITA.

(I'm glad to see a post from you, though. I've been wondering how you're doing.)

[gileswench.livejournal.com]

There is no 'justice' in killing. There is only vengeance. Vengeance only fuels the cycle of vengeance, resulting in more death, more misery.

I shed no tears for Saddam Hussein, but I do not want his blood on my hands.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Ditto. I'll try to catch up on your LJ in my not-so-copious spare time. The only reason I've had a chance to post has been that I'm sick. *sigh*

Anyway, huge hugs right back at you.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I shed no tears for Saddam Hussein, but I do not want his blood on my hands.

Exactly.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

There is a social theory about the progress of humanity. In the first phase we take care of ourselves first and foremost. In the second, we look out for our family to the exclusion of everyone else. A little later we may define family in a broader sense, but it remains people we know. This is the Mafia phase, if you will.

The third phase allows us to have a stronger sense of purpose. Our country and its precepts -- this is the phase of true patriotism -- become a strong force that may outweigh the good of our family or of ourselves depending upon the circumstances. We follow the law, sometimes blindly.

The fourth allows us higher ideals, but we don't necessarily formulate those ideals for ourselves. We may occasionally break a law, with due consideration, if we consider that it violates these ideals.

There are two higher phases, but my point is that as a society with our Constitution we should be operating at level four at minimum. The ideals are set out for us, all we need to do is believe and follow them.

At best we seem to be at level three and so often its level two. This execution feels level two. Tribes want the blood or head of their enemies. Countries rarely do.

[thorbol.livejournal.com]

I too oppose the death penalty, though wondrous folks like Hussein and Timothy McVeigh have made me consider whether I should remain absolute in this. My main current reason for opposing it is the certainty that even the best intentions, aided by the most rigorous reasoning and most advanced technology, will not prevent innocent people from being its victims. My second may arise in connection with my first, or there may be more to it: I do not believe you should kill somebody, no matter how evil he or she has been, if you can make that "person" harmless by imprisonment. (There's doubtless room for more precision than I can bring to it now.)

The strongest argument I can think of in favor of the death penalty, though, is based on that same basic assertion the drives me to oppose it, that our first job as a society is to protect its innocent members. (That's the best I can put it now.) Murderers who live to break out of prison and kill more people can be, or at least appear to be, a rebuke to those of us who refused to allow them to be executed. If he lived'd to escape, Hussein very well might have murdered more people. There's a much weaker argument, but not a wrong one, that even his being alive in prison would inspire more murder in the long run than his death would.

As I write, I'm even reconsidering whether it's necessarily more barbaric to have a death penalty than not to have one. If the question is whether it puts innocent people more at risk, then I'd answer yes, it certainly is. If the focus swings to "humane treatment," including treatment of the convicted murderer, then the answer would depend on what the alternative punishment is: from that perspective, life in prison very well might be seen as more barbaric then a quick death. Though I doubt I'll favor the death penalty any time soon, my thought at the moment is that it's far less an indicator of barbarity than the willing ness to have people tortured, which even some supposed liberals these days have expressed.

[riverfox.livejournal.com]

First, thanks for that. It's interesting in studying the anthropological structure of a family or society, which I find is interchangeable depending on the "village" feel of the family, whether it's by blood or not. But that's really just a comment, not really my point here.*g*

Second, I think that the level here seems to be a mixture of two and three, but on a more political scapegoat viewpoint. Flag-waving and saber-rattling to the tune of "You hurt me, you die" (im)morality.