the hanged man
i know this is a little late, and there seemed to be plenty of coverage regarding this issue on kottu, but here’s my post about the hanging of saddam hussein.
as a buddhist, or atleast someone who believes that buddha’s philosophy is about the only way to live and understand life, i am morally and principally against capital punishment. i believe that no one has the right to take away someone else’s life, and especially not in revenge. i believe this because i believe that someone who’s been harmed or hurt in some way by someone else, has the spiritual capacity and strength to rise above what was done to them, thereby not resorting to means of violence to achieve something as lowly as revenge.
of course, the adult in me sees the idealism in this kind of stand. life isn’t about moral absolutes. it’s never that black and white. who am i to tell someone who’s family was torn apart by grief, that the man that had their son killed doesn’t deserve death? who am i, who knows nothing of the kind of pain so many people have experienced at the hands of a selfish tyrant, to say that hanging him is cruel?
hanging him is cruel and immoral. it’s against the law of nature, in which rightfully, his life should be taken by age or disease. by karma. but what about all the people’s lives he took unlawfully? what about the thousands he compromised, the millions he ruined? yes yes, the arugment is circular.
hanging him, besides being cruel and immoral however, is futile. and this is my real problem.
george bush has proved himself to be just as much a despot intent on using the rest of the world to his advantage, no less determined and ruthless than adolf hitler, or ironically, saddam hussein. he has chosen blindly and selfishly to ravage a poor nation for, technically, no good reason. as arundhati roy said ‘The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it.’
it is an unfair war, something that wasn’t thought out objectively, and something that was carried out brazenly.
so saddam is gone. but the bush administration have already expressed their suggestions for making everything ok : installing someone they call a ’strong man’ in iraq. a strong man? another ruthless, self righteous dictator? just like saddam, only this time, he’ll be bush’s puppet; that’s even better!
so saddam is gone. once, hitler was gone too, but saddam replaced him, idi amin replaced him. the people who rejoiced at his execution will only have to deal with another, soon enough. and the next time, there won’t be an execution because he’ll be america’s man, well protected and thoroughly praised.
when will we learn? when will we stop fooling ourselves? firstly that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to someone. and secondly, that the death of one doesn’t mean the death of the idea they stood for.
I wholly agree with your point of view on capital punishment - I believe it is barbaric and frankly I don’t think anyone should have the right to take the life of another person. However, Saddam committed all his crimes and atrocities in a country that DOES have and practice capital punishment and he was tried and punished there, in Iraq. The timing and manner of his execution is a matter of much debate, personally I can’t see that it was a mere coincidence he was hanged on Eid, more like someone trying to make a statement. So, whilst I am against capital punishment, I think that there was very little alternative.
Comment by R — January 11, 2007 @ 9:39 am
i am morally and principally against capital punishment.
— But… you must admit: it makes very compelling TV!
i believe that no one has the right to take away someone else’s life, and especially not in revenge.
–What if they are just bored?.. squishing other people is an interesting way to spend a lazy sunday..
i believe this because i believe that someone who’s been harmed or hurt in some way by someone else, has the spiritual capacity and strength to rise above what was done to them, thereby not resorting to means of violence to achieve something as lowly as revenge.
–But revenge is fun. Yes the moral higher ground is.. er.. moral.. but good ole fashioned revenge is oh such good fun. Eye for an eye and all, that’s why the Good book has all of that. True dey got turn da other cheek but 1. that’s kinky and 2.Eye for eye waay more fun!
installing someone they call a ’strong man’ in iraq. a strong man? another ruthless, self righteous dictator? just like saddam, only this time, he’ll be bush’s puppet; that’s even better!
–Saddam WAS bush’s Last puppet. Guy got bored, wanted a fresh puppet, so buh bye saddam. Lesson learned? Never piss off a dictator (Refering to Bush here)
when will we learn? when will we stop fooling ourselves? firstly that death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to someone.
–Nope, life is.
and secondly, that the death of one doesn’t mean the death of the idea they stood for.
–Especially in radical Islam where you have Maytrdom, immortality and such…
Comment by anon — January 11, 2007 @ 10:05 am
Well what is most striking about the original post is that no alternative is proposed. OK, so don’t hang Saddam. But what does he deserve then?
In the end, justice isn’t about the future, and ensuring that crime doesn’t recur. That’s a policing issue. Justice is about ensuring that the guilty are punished.
You point to Idi Amin. Yes, he should have been hung too. As should’ve been Pol Pot. And Stalin. Instead, we let them die in their beds at a ripe old age.
Perhaps if in the years after WW2 we’d hanged more tyrants, less would’ve thought they could get away with it. We’ll never know.
What we should be doing is making sure that the world isn’t a comfortable place for tyrants and would be tyrants. Part of doing that is ensuring the world sees that justice is served.
Comment by David Blacker — January 11, 2007 @ 11:18 am
There’s been many an account of the unfair trial Saddam was put thru - but at the end of the day, whether he was given a fair hearing or not, he was guilty for massive inhumane crimes.period.
So what were the choices before the justice system? Death penalty or life imprisonment? We can agree that the death penalty is morally wrong, but can we also ignore the reality? Let’s consider the alternative to the death penalty in this case: life imprisonment. One of the strongest arguments for life imprisonment is the possible reformation/ repenting of/by the ‘criminal’. You have to admit that neither applies to Saddam - he was a sick bastard till the end. Then the question is, is it fair to ask the Iraqi govt to fork over cash (they don’t have) to accommodate/ let him rot in a cell for the rest of his life? I don’t think so.
So at the end of the day, the question which no one seems to really answer remains: ideally, what SHOULD have been done with the man??
I do agree that his death won’t kill the ideology and everything for which he was idolized. And worse unfortunately is the fact that his death may be far more dangerous since a martyr has a much more powerful influence in that part of the world..
David Blacker: “Perhaps if in the years after WW2 we’d hanged more tyrants, less would’ve thought they could get away with it”
Do you honestly think psychos like Saddam would let a possible death sentence stop him? I doubt it..
(
Comment by Manshark — January 11, 2007 @ 1:02 pm
“i believe this because i believe that someone who’s been harmed or hurt in some way by someone else, has the spiritual capacity and strength to rise above what was done to them, thereby not resorting to means of violence to achieve something as lowly as revenge.”
..and the saints go marching on!
first, yes. as ms roy says, this particular war was cowardly, and it was based on greed. but so was a certain iraqui invasion of kuwait; a rich, well goverened little country that had done nothing at all to anybody…
and second, there was something i read in puzo’s ‘omerta’, where he put capital punishment in a very interesting light.
when a man dies, says puzo, he will never breathe god’s clean air again. he will never see another sunrise, never hear his children laugh, never see them grow up. never again taste his favourite meal, never fall in love with a work of art or a beautiful song…
..and so, he asks if it is then fair for a man who killed a hundred such men in cold blood fully knowing this, to be maintained in a room, fed, allowed to breathe, see a thousand sunrises, know how his children are doing, and listen to his music, read his books and enjoy his meals.
he does not ask if it is immoral or not. simply whether it is fair. such fairness, he says, is beyond humans. it is only God who can be so unfeelingly fair; and he does not expect such fairness for himself, or expect it from any man.
as always, i am not agreeing or disagreeing. simply a koan in your way.
Comment by jokerman — January 11, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
I agree with electra on most of the points mentioned,, i also admit that saddam killed loads of other people,,but soem of the comments that were put up seem to not consider a lot of things. like i have said in my post “saddam, the US, justice and Islam”, most people tend to think that human blood goes for several prices, depending on their georgraphy ethniciyty etc etc. ..when reality is all men have blood that constitutes the same elements. Pls note that i wil reply to any comments to my comment only if time allows it,,as exams are taking its toll on me.
@ R : the death of saddam on eid was no coincidence, it was deliberate, why did they not give him time till the 27th of Jan? the day he was originally meant to be hanged.
@ manshark : “There’s been many an account of the unfair trial Saddam was put thru - but at the end of the day, whether he was given a fair hearing or not, he was guilty for massive inhumane crimes.period.” I really see no logic in that,seriously i see no connection in your two sentences.
there are loads of others in the living world today who have killed thousands, and the so called super powers would take action against them only if they had a strategic interest..bush, blair, ariel sharon..etc etc, who talks abt them!! thousands of iraqi children died by economic sanctions even before they realised that they were iraqi!! anyway, (i know i deviated,but its all fact), do u mean to say that just because he was guilty of inhuman crimes it is immaterial if he gets a fair trial or not? if we assume that saddam got a fair trial,,then there are loads of others living today who deserve that “fair treatment” long before saddam got it.
Comment by aufidius — January 11, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
Aufidius: perhaps the link wasn’t as clear as it should have been - the first bit of my comment was meant to mean: it’s accepted Saddam didn’t get a fair trial. Yet, let’s say he did get a fair trial, it’d have taken a brilliant (and very imaginative) defence to not bring home a lot of atrocities to Saddam. Therefore, had he been convicted fair and square - then what could be the possible sentence handed down? The death penalty or life imprisonment..and then onto the next bit of my comment..hopefully the link is clearer :s
And to the second part of your question - you’ve assumed I assumed something different to what I in fact assumed!
I don’t believe I’ve assumed he got a fair trial at all - when the defence is not given a chance to defend itself and cross-examine the prosecutor’s witnesses, the final conviction is a foregone conclusion. What I meant was, I don’t think it would have taken much to convict Saddam of inhumane crimes at a fair trial..hence the assumption of the two SENTENCES available to be handed down in that instance..
Comment by Manshark — January 11, 2007 @ 8:13 pm
-Perhaps if in the years after WW2 we’d hanged more tyrants, less would’ve thought they could get away with it. We’ll never know.- did saddam seem scared moments away from his execution? you think people like him aren’t prepared for death? you don’t think that, on some level, they even look forward to it, just so that they will become a martyr in their death, glorified and talked about?
of course executing one won’t stop others like him, others worse than him, what a preposterous thought to even think!
all i was trying to point out was the futility of the action of execution. not only the futility, but they made him a hero, a martyr that will live forever in our memories as a man who faced his death strong and unafraid. did you not hear what he wrote in that letterthat his lawyers released before his execution?
true, it was pointed out that i hadn’t bothered to look for an alternative. let’s not fool ourselves with the ‘if we hadn’t killed him, there might’ve been a chance of reforming him’. ok, so we aren’t looking for possiblities of reformation. but looking at it from another angle, wouldn’t life imprisonment have been more of a punishment for a man like that?
Comment by electra — January 12, 2007 @ 7:20 am
Personally, if I had been in Saddam’s shoes, I’d have preferred death to a life in prison, defeated and ashamed. Therefore, I don’t think execution is necessarily more cruel than keeping the man alive behind bars.
What purpose is there in keeping him alive?
Comment by Ravana — January 16, 2007 @ 8:46 am
Electra, what is achieved or lost by his death is immaterial from a judicial point of view. That is a political viewpoint. Would the world have been different had Hitler survived the fall of the Third Reich and been imprisoned? Probably not. It doesn’t matter. Punishment is about justice, not politics, and not welfare. It doesn’t matter whether hanging or imprisonment is the worse punishment. If you want to do the worst you can to him, then he should have been tortured to the edges of his sanity, kept alive for long horribly painful weeks before being allowed to die. But this isn’t about making him feel bad. It’s about punishing him adequately for his crimes. I think death was adequate. His victims probably wwould demand more. But this isn’t about them either.
Comment by David Blacker — January 16, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
Some nice arguments guys!
The word ‘fair’ has been thrown around a lot. When considering what Saddam is and is not guilty of, I feel we need to consider it from a neutral perspective. The fact that we look at the murder of Saddam from the perspective of the people who’s loved ones were killed by him, makes it all subjective.
From a moral and legal point of view what he did is wrong and yes, I feel he needs to be punished for it.
I do not agree with capital punishment (But will leave that argument aside)
The hanging of Saddam was unlawful firstly, because he did not get a fair trial and secondly, he was not treated equally. Equally meaning he was a very easy target.
If we were to treat Saddam and the survivors of his regime ‘fairly’, and we decide to do this by hanging the perpetrator on Eid. Then we would need to hang Bush on Thanksgiving Day and any other person who committed murder. What makes it unfair or unjust is that Bush with all the atrocities he continues to commit, is still the president of a world super power and Saddam is the bad, dead ex-dictator.
Hang Bush and you would have treated Saddam and the people of Iraq fairly.
Comment by Jay — February 8, 2007 @ 10:27 am