While I'll not weep any tears at the news that Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging overnight, but I do regret that this was how he met his end.
Bringing an evil leader to justice? Yes.
Punishing him by his own sorry methods? No. I don't see what good it does? I can only see the harm.
Supporters wanting revenge for his death? A feeling that the Iraqi state is still one where violence rules (and comes first). The coalition “freedom” forces still being so involved militarily and politically in Iraq while the trial and execution took place. Does Saddam’s blood not spill onto our hands?
Was Saddam any kind of risk to remain in prison for the rest of his life? Would it not have sent a stronger message to Iraq and the world that "things were different now" to have incarcerated him, but left the timing of his death to God and not man?
Maybe someone can fill me in on the religious and cultural reasoning and justification for why it's ok. But from my thousands-of-miles-away Western perspective, I'm disappointed that it turned out this way.
2 comments:
Maybe he deserved to swing, perhaps all mass murderers do (although that makes Bush and Blair equally culpable). But what I find abhorrent is the idea that his walk to the gallows was filmed and broadcast around the world. Even the architects of Nazism and those who operated the concentration camps were executed behind closed doors. It's not that he deserves to be treated with compassion and humanity - it's a measure of a civilised society that we accord it to him. I feel disgusted and somehow ashamed.
i actually did weep tears which i didn't understand. i'm still working through that part of his death realizing that this was a mass murderer who committed heinous crimes against humanity.
i'm not so sure his death was justice as much as it was vengeance.
obviously i did not live under his regime so I don't know how having him dead vs. having him alive in prison will affect the people of iraq.
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