Life or death for Saddam?

When confronted a right-to-life advocate is usually flummoxed with the assertion, “than you are against the death penalty, am I right?” This is a problem for many if not all right to life advocates, because while Terri Shivo deserves to get every opportunity to live, even after she is clinically dead, and unborn fetuses have rights even living people don’t have, convicted felons should not be allowed to live. And why do we feel we have the right to execute them? Because, they are bad people.

The problem that I have, as an anti-death penalty person, is every once in a while a really bad person comes along that my gut tells me probably should die. However, my convictions tell me there are no exceptions. If there is person that should die it is Saddam Hussein, the notorious and convicted former president of Iraq.

Let’s face it outside of the fact that he was deposed as the leader of his country by an illegal invasion and that his trial was questionable, there is not a lot to like about this guy and many people, his own people, will be happy when he stretches the rope.

I submit that this is the very reason that the death penalty is wrong. It’s wrong because its premise is that the person that is being executed is guilty of such terrible crimes that their life should be taken from them. Usually the crime is taking of someone elses life, so we get down to an eye-for-an-eye kind of logic that most people agree is senseless. What is really at work here is justice for the victim and the survivors. What we would call it, if we weren’t trying to justify it, is vengeance. The law then makes everyone in our society complicate in the execution. The question is, are we as a society becoming what we are executing, a murderer?

I’m sorry. I know Suddam and Bundy and any number of people qualify as being corrupted enough and dangerous enough that we need to make sure that they never walk free again, but killing them is just a momentary feel good solution to a problem we don’t really understand. Is it better to realize every morning you wake up that you will never be free or realize you’re going to die? Most people given that there is no hope would sooner or later chose death. And if they did not choose death, is there anyone who would trade places with them. I submit that life imprisonment without hope of freedom is probably the most deserving of punishments for a Saddam Hussein.

Let him observe the people he has tortured and the survivors of those he has murdered recover from his torment and prosper, while he lives a life of waste and hopelessness. In the mean time we do not appear to the world as the executioner.

Almost no free western society approves of the death penalty. And though we can claim that the Iraq government will execute Saddam, we will be held accountable throughout the Moslem world if he dies. We don’t need to put another sharp stick into that hornets nest. So, if for practical reasons if not moral, we should object to the execution of Saddam Hussein