Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called the verdict "a hopeful reminder to all Iraqis that the rule of law can triumph over the rule of fear and that the peaceful pursuit of justice is preferable to the pursuit of vengeance." - foxnews
Justice is defined by whomever is in power at the time. Saddam called his killings justice. We call killing him justice. So, justice is often a word used to hide vengeance. Revenge killing leads to more of the same and you get an escalation of hostilities, a cycle of violence.
Saddam's crimes are horrible, certainly. But in attempting to police that problem in Iraq, haven't we now killed hundreds of thousands more innocent Iraqi people than Saddam did when he was in power?How will killing Saddam make any difference operationally? He hasn't been running the country for some time now. He is already out of action.
Once you have someone in custody all death penalty executions are vengeance. They don't deter crime any more than life in prison. According to one source, prison for life is cheaper.
I caught up with God in a Starbucks recently. He had laryngitis but he wrote on a napkin in flaming letters with His finger, "Stop killing eachother." He was not at all Delphic.
1 comment:
How true that killing Saddam isn't going to really change anything excepting to ensure that he isn't some how put back into power at some point in the future (stranger things have happened). I am still waiting to see if his death sentence will, in fact, generate even further killings and riots between the Shiites and Sunni Muslims and/or fuel the insurgency further. So, far there seems to be a "wait and see" attitude but I think that's because most of the Sunnis had already written him off emotionally. Hanging Saddam Hussein could make him a martyr, of sorts, and that could make him more dangerous in death than he ever was in life.
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