Sunday, December 31, 2006
The Execution of Saddam - A Few Thoughts
No one should rejoice at Saddam’s execution (after all, if God does not rejoice in the death of the wicked, neither should we). However, can we rejoice at the meaning of this man’s demise? And what about the repsonse from those who either don’t care or want to to see the execution of another President. Well, here are my thoughts…
The death penalty itself is a difficult question for most theologians. Yes, of course the Old Testament gives us the calling to take a “life for a life” when the murder of an innocent has occurred, but in the only New Testament example of jurisprudence regarding a death penalty situation is Jesus with the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-8). There Jesus does not throw out the fact that this sin (and as we see elsewhere in scriptures, all sin) is punishable by death. He does however challenge the notion that human being is sufficiently righteous enough to be the administrator of such punishment. For this reason I am usually against the death penalty, except in cases where it is necessary for the safety of the society (example: Ted Bundy who not only was an escape artist, but also would kill the first chance he got). Saddam certainly was a threat to society (as a rallying point for the Baathist folks as well as those of his clan), although is he more of a threat as a “martyr”? I don’t know. No one does. The question though is this execution proper?
Here are the facts:
1) Saddam murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people.
2) Saddam used gas on the Kurds.
3) Saddam started a war with the Iranians to gain oil grounds that resulted in the deaths of over a million Iranian soldiers and civilians.
4) Saddam was convicted after a trial by his own country people. We can argue about the fairness of the trial, but given the fact that the above
three items are indisputable, the “fairness” of the trial is of less importance than in a case where the facts are questionable.
5) Saddam was put to death by the Iraqi government, not by the U.S. In actuality, I think that the U.S. would have preferred Saddam to rot in a
world court jail cell, out of Iraq and out of the light as a rallying symbol for the anti-governmental forces in Iraq.
So, the question is did the people of Iraq have the right to execute their own former ruler? I think back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the question of whether tyrannicide was acceptable for a Christian, knowing that the death of Hitler would save thousands of lives. Bonhoeffer ultimately decided that, in a fallen world, defeating the forces of evil and injustice made tyrannicide acceptable. The people of Iraq, working out of the Islamic context, found the same true. I think that, given their past and their need for a fresh start that, while I would not have chosen to execute Saddam myself, I think their action in executing him is understandable and should be acknowledged as a hard choice where there were no good ones.
I was spurred to write by two additional things. The first is the call for President Bush to be executed for war crimes. Really folks, your anti-Bush fever has gotten the best of you, especially since many of these people are anti-death penalty normally (but its okay for politicians you hate?). I have written before that President Clinton should have been indicted by the world courts for his failure to act and actual complicity with the genocidal forces in Rwanda (by keeping the word genocide from being used). Clinton though was a good man who more than anything simply did nothing, which is the old adage for allowing evil to prosper. What has President Bush done that is so universally horrible? He did not order the actions of those at Abu Grab, the notorious prison in Iraq. Those soldiers acted on their own and were punished by the military justice courts. If he had simply “pardoned” them, then it would have been acceptance by the country of their action. It wasn’t and we didn’t. And no one died!
At Guantanamo Bay, the legality of the treatment of those prisoners is still under review. Have we tortured them? That is a question that there is not universal agreement about, and we must admit that torture, while always wrong, has a different tone to it when it is done for mere pleasure (which is what Saddam and countless other dictators have used it for) and when it is used to get information regarding terrorist attacks (and please, don’t tell me that it never works, because it does, at least mild forms of mental and physical persuasion does, and no one would try and extract information from captives if there was never anyway to get it out). Is torture of non-state actors who seek to kill tens of thousands okay if it saves those thousands? I am still uncomfortable with it, but there is at least some moral grounds for the discussion. Regardless, the treatment of those in Guantanamo has not been conclusively called “torture” and no one has been killed by our interrogations (though there have been suicides).
Other reasons for executing the President? The War in Iraq? Please, we acted on the same basis of intelligence as every other nation in the world had, and, since Saddam had kept the inspectors out, he had violated the cease fire at the end of the Gulf War, so the war was justifiable, regardless of whether you thought it smart. Besides, it brought the opportunity for freedom to 25 million people. They may in the end not want it, but somehow the idea of executing or hating a man for bringing the opportunity of freedom to 25 million (50 if you count Afghanistan) seems odd.
So, those who are asking for the execution of President Bush are not just practicing “moral equivalence,” which is bad enough on its own (after all, we could all end up being executed if that was the case, and that was Jesus’ point in the John 8 story). These people are allowing their hatred of President Bush to take control of their sense of justice. To those whom I have read asking for Bush’s execution under the same basis as Saddam’s, please, get control of yourself.
But the other thing that caught my eye was this comment from one of the folks on Daily Kos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/30/02129/067)
This line caught my eye:
So, overall, did my life change with the execution of Saddam? Only time will tell… if South Park does a really funny episode on it that I can watch on YouTube, I think I can say yes. Otherwise, no. My life is no different in a world without Saddam. What a sad, sad waste this war is.
My response is this: the world is not about you. Can we not celebrate that the Iraqi people (who from all that I have seen overwhelmingly approved of this execution) got some sort of justice? Is not our shared world better when those who murder, exploit, and destroy know they will face justice? If you cannot, perhaps the real waste is not this war (which we can debate at another time), but your life. A life that does not mourn with those who mourn, know that no one is free when anyone is under injustice that does not cheer with those who experience joy. Well, that is not much of a life, and I would call that a waste.
As we enter the New Year, let us all pray that the justice of God and the hope of freedom will come to the whole earth.
