This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 9:41 am and is filed under News, Extremism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Execution a Total Disaster
“Total disaster,” said the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune yesterday on Saddam Hussein’s Saturday execution. What was so disastrous? Most news channels showed a quiet moment of putting a noose around the neck of a calm Saddam Hussein, remarking how subdued he was.
The answer comes in what appears to be a cell phone video of the moments before and after. Hussein was taunted before the noose was placed around his neck and as the trap door opened below him. This was clearly an act of revenge rather than an act of justice.
Justice? Like most in the western world outside the U.S. and like more people in the U.S. since last century, I don’t see how justice can ever be found in the death of another human being–no matter how vicious and merciless he has been himself. I find myself surprised to agree with the spokesperson for the Vatican that “Capital punishment is always tragic news, a reason for sadness, even if it deals with a person who was guilty of grave crimes.”
Just because U.S. spokespeople claim the trial is fair doesn’t silence those who question the fairness. Wouldn’t an unquestionable process of careful justice have helped the U.S. and others find the high moral ground they so often claim? I am thinking of the process of reconciliation in South Africa. I see the answer in meeting violence with nonviolence.
- “Execution chaos called total disaster,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 2007, A5. Story doesn’t appear on the SL Tribune website, but the original (and longer) story is on the Los Angeles Times website.
Update: Democracy Now! held a roundtable on the hanging and international law the morning I posted this.
Archive
January 3rd, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I’ve always found Saddam a loathsome individual, but I felt sick to my stomach when I had heard he’d been executed. Executions are so brutal and barbaric - and most of all regressive. I’d hate to think what kind of karmic energy we are creating in this country