So Saddam Hussein has been executed. Tried in an Iraqi court for one of the many crimes he was clearly very very guilty of, and then sentenced to death. Killed for killing. The act of killing brutalises the killer, whether that be the government who sanction it, or a murderer who slaughters in cold blood. Iraqi democracy hasn’t been promoted through this, Saddam hasn’t ‘paid’ for his crimes, none of those he committed such atrocious acts against have received any restitution, and to delight in someone’s death is to allow yourself to be drawn into the brutality of their actions… Should be forgive Saddam? That’s not for me to say, as someone personally unaffected, but as someone who thinks the death penalty is a profoundly immoral law, I can’t possibly take any pleasure in his death, and am sickened by the celebratory way it’s been reported…
I was initially also sickened by the comment from the government, reported on the BBC site , but as the full quote taken from the CNN site below shows, she was grossly misrepresented on the BBC site…
“I welcome the fact that Saddam Hussein has been tried by an Iraqi court for at least some of the appalling crimes he committed against the Iraqi people. He has now been held to account. [the next bit was missed from the BBC site] The British Government does not support the use of the death penalty, in Iraq or anywhere else… We have made our position very clear to the Iraqi authorities, but we respect their decision as that of a sovereign nation.”
If you miss the second half of that, it’s a completely different quote…
Anyway, Saddam’s execution is no cause for celebration, but it may be one for reflection for those who still see killing as a suitable punishment for killing. I hope and pray that the predicted upsurge in violence in Iraq is a misjudgement… As with so many of these things, there’s no pleasure at all in the doom-mongers on the left being right. I so hope they are wrong. People being killed and injured is never a good thing, least of all to prove a point.