10th January 2007, 9:09 PM
Life is the most precious thing that we have, and it is not right for us to deny it of others, whether or not they believe the same. Saddaam clearly does not believe that, but that makes it no less wrong for us to kill him; indeed, it makes the ones killing him wrong too.
I will ignore most of your ranting, but one thing stands out for its ignorance... the idea that Saddaam is "Right up there with Hitler." That statement is quite simply completely wrong in every possible way. Hitler and Stalin are on an order completely different from any other figures of the 20th Century and, because of technology, probably on a different order from anyone else who has ever lived. Saddaam caused many deaths and did terrible things, but comparing him to Hitler is just ridiculous right-wing propaganda. Hitler started a war that killed millions and ordered the eradication of 12 million people (completing half of that task) as well as the deaths of millions of others who opposed him or belonged to the wrong racial group or classification (gay men, Gypsies, Slavs, political dissidents, etc)... Saddaam? He did start a war (the Iran-Iraq war) and was extremely brutal in his methods, but he did not try to exterminate the entirety of the minority populations; he only wanted to kill some of them to make the other ones stop resisting him (an evil thing to be sure, but nothing compared to Hitler...). Stalin was as evil as Hitler. People like Saddaam, Pol Pot, or others like them only are in the eyes of their most deluded opponents... "Bush is the worst president in American history" would be much closer to the truth than "Saddaam is equal to Hitler". (whether he is or not is debatable, since so much of politics is about the issues of the day and understaning how good a president was requires understanding the major issues of his time and how well he dealt with him, but he's certainly pretty high on the list...)
Saddaam should actually be compared to other brutal dictators, many of which the US fully supports -- for instance, Musharaf in Pakistan, or the Chinese government (who execute more people than any other government; the actual number isn't quite known because it is not publicized)... and we supported Saddaam in his worst years, remember, all the way from the Iran-Iraq war and its 1.7 million total casualties (a good thing for us because it distracted the new evil, Iran and its religious government) to Saddaam's crushing of the 1991 revolts after the Gulf War (Pres. Bush 1's people were so helpful that they even allowed Saddaam to fly his helicopters in the no-fly zone, greatly helping them in their revolt suppression operations!)... we have absolutely no moral ground to stand on on this issue. None. It is US policy to support evil dictators if we think that they will oppose those groups we hate even more -- the Communists, Al-Quaida, whatever. Of course we turned on Saddaam eventually, and had him killed (turning him over to Iraqi "justice" was tantamount to a quick death sentence), for various reasons (oil, revenge, etc.), but that doesn't change what we did in the years before that...
Absolutely, completley, and utterly untrue. This is exactly why we MUST uphold justice. He deserves the same justice as all other humans do... morality and law may be human constructs, but they exist because without them human society cannot function, and in order to maintain a functional and just society we must uphold those moral codes. Executing people, the most final and brutal aspect of justice, goes directly against any concept of justice that includes any humanistic aspect (such as the Declaration of Independance -- "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- maybe it is just a construct in thought to say that people are born with inalienable rights, but even so that is an amazing idea that, if it were upheld, would make for a much better society... giving all the chance to succeed and be free in life, and punishing them appropriately when they do wrong. Ideas of what are moral change with time, and gradually over the centuries the idea of death of a penalty has gotten harder and harder to morally justify. As I said, it is not right to kill someone simply because they have killed. A good society would, in this situation, uphold their values despite the existance of this person ignoring them and sentence the person to a prison term, hoping that they can either be truly rehabilitated or kept away from society permanantly. Europe understands this, which is why the death penalty is illegal in the European Union (and they give far fewer life-without-parole sentences too; while that is an appropriate punishment for some crimes, the US perhaps hands out such sentences too often...).
The other aspect of the death penalty argument apply here only in part. While it is clear that Saddaam was guilty, the trial still was not fair or free. The defence was weak, the proceedings rigged, and the result predetermined; some may say that a truly fair, indepentant trial, like the one Slobodan Milosevich recieved, is not something such leaders deserve (and Milosevich did a good job of delaying that trial over and over for years until he finally died before it ended), they truly do. The world should get a true account of the events of that leader's rule and all of the things they did that go against international law... Saddaam most certainly did not get that. He was killed because Bush wanted him dead and he was Sunni and the government of Iraq is Shi'ite, and that is the end of that as far as legality was concerned.
(For most any other death penalty case, the issue of whether the defendant is actually guilty is a central issue, and one that has caused some US states to suspend the death penalty -- the innocent can and sometimes are killed in places the death penalty is allowed, and this is the ultimate miscarraige in justice...)
Actually, the Sunni portion would mostly be happier if he was still in power, for they would still be in control of Iraq... remember, most of Saddaam's victims were Shi'ite and Kurd, not Sunni. While Sunnis were killed too for civil crimes, and Saddaam's regime was notorious for abuses there, all of the nations of the Middle East are horrible on this issue (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran have some of the least fair and most brutal "justice" systems in the world...), and they had the power, so they would rather suffer his occasional tyrannical act than lose all of their power and authority. The Sunni inability to accept their loss of power is one of the main things fueling the insurgency (as Shi'ite desires to get back at the Sunnis for years of mistreatment fuel the other half of it)...
I will ignore most of your ranting, but one thing stands out for its ignorance... the idea that Saddaam is "Right up there with Hitler." That statement is quite simply completely wrong in every possible way. Hitler and Stalin are on an order completely different from any other figures of the 20th Century and, because of technology, probably on a different order from anyone else who has ever lived. Saddaam caused many deaths and did terrible things, but comparing him to Hitler is just ridiculous right-wing propaganda. Hitler started a war that killed millions and ordered the eradication of 12 million people (completing half of that task) as well as the deaths of millions of others who opposed him or belonged to the wrong racial group or classification (gay men, Gypsies, Slavs, political dissidents, etc)... Saddaam? He did start a war (the Iran-Iraq war) and was extremely brutal in his methods, but he did not try to exterminate the entirety of the minority populations; he only wanted to kill some of them to make the other ones stop resisting him (an evil thing to be sure, but nothing compared to Hitler...). Stalin was as evil as Hitler. People like Saddaam, Pol Pot, or others like them only are in the eyes of their most deluded opponents... "Bush is the worst president in American history" would be much closer to the truth than "Saddaam is equal to Hitler". (whether he is or not is debatable, since so much of politics is about the issues of the day and understaning how good a president was requires understanding the major issues of his time and how well he dealt with him, but he's certainly pretty high on the list...)
Saddaam should actually be compared to other brutal dictators, many of which the US fully supports -- for instance, Musharaf in Pakistan, or the Chinese government (who execute more people than any other government; the actual number isn't quite known because it is not publicized)... and we supported Saddaam in his worst years, remember, all the way from the Iran-Iraq war and its 1.7 million total casualties (a good thing for us because it distracted the new evil, Iran and its religious government) to Saddaam's crushing of the 1991 revolts after the Gulf War (Pres. Bush 1's people were so helpful that they even allowed Saddaam to fly his helicopters in the no-fly zone, greatly helping them in their revolt suppression operations!)... we have absolutely no moral ground to stand on on this issue. None. It is US policy to support evil dictators if we think that they will oppose those groups we hate even more -- the Communists, Al-Quaida, whatever. Of course we turned on Saddaam eventually, and had him killed (turning him over to Iraqi "justice" was tantamount to a quick death sentence), for various reasons (oil, revenge, etc.), but that doesn't change what we did in the years before that...
Quote:Showing mercy to him is a pointless act for he has none himself.
Absolutely, completley, and utterly untrue. This is exactly why we MUST uphold justice. He deserves the same justice as all other humans do... morality and law may be human constructs, but they exist because without them human society cannot function, and in order to maintain a functional and just society we must uphold those moral codes. Executing people, the most final and brutal aspect of justice, goes directly against any concept of justice that includes any humanistic aspect (such as the Declaration of Independance -- "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" -- maybe it is just a construct in thought to say that people are born with inalienable rights, but even so that is an amazing idea that, if it were upheld, would make for a much better society... giving all the chance to succeed and be free in life, and punishing them appropriately when they do wrong. Ideas of what are moral change with time, and gradually over the centuries the idea of death of a penalty has gotten harder and harder to morally justify. As I said, it is not right to kill someone simply because they have killed. A good society would, in this situation, uphold their values despite the existance of this person ignoring them and sentence the person to a prison term, hoping that they can either be truly rehabilitated or kept away from society permanantly. Europe understands this, which is why the death penalty is illegal in the European Union (and they give far fewer life-without-parole sentences too; while that is an appropriate punishment for some crimes, the US perhaps hands out such sentences too often...).
The other aspect of the death penalty argument apply here only in part. While it is clear that Saddaam was guilty, the trial still was not fair or free. The defence was weak, the proceedings rigged, and the result predetermined; some may say that a truly fair, indepentant trial, like the one Slobodan Milosevich recieved, is not something such leaders deserve (and Milosevich did a good job of delaying that trial over and over for years until he finally died before it ended), they truly do. The world should get a true account of the events of that leader's rule and all of the things they did that go against international law... Saddaam most certainly did not get that. He was killed because Bush wanted him dead and he was Sunni and the government of Iraq is Shi'ite, and that is the end of that as far as legality was concerned.
(For most any other death penalty case, the issue of whether the defendant is actually guilty is a central issue, and one that has caused some US states to suspend the death penalty -- the innocent can and sometimes are killed in places the death penalty is allowed, and this is the ultimate miscarraige in justice...)
Quote:and the entire Iraqi nation is thrilled to death that he hung by the neck until he was dead.
Actually, the Sunni portion would mostly be happier if he was still in power, for they would still be in control of Iraq... remember, most of Saddaam's victims were Shi'ite and Kurd, not Sunni. While Sunnis were killed too for civil crimes, and Saddaam's regime was notorious for abuses there, all of the nations of the Middle East are horrible on this issue (Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran have some of the least fair and most brutal "justice" systems in the world...), and they had the power, so they would rather suffer his occasional tyrannical act than lose all of their power and authority. The Sunni inability to accept their loss of power is one of the main things fueling the insurgency (as Shi'ite desires to get back at the Sunnis for years of mistreatment fuel the other half of it)...