Friday, January 05, 2007

Lynch Mob Justice


One thing I noticed about Saddam Hussein’s execution was that Saddam, faced with imminent death, maintained a higher degree of poise and dignity than did his executioners. While Saddam, like all tyrants, deserved his fate, I couldn’t help but feel that his hanging was more like a lynching than it was an administration of justice.


And did anyone else notice that Saddam looked so alone as he stood on the gallows platform, awaiting his plunge through the trapdoor? If killing Iraqi civilians was the crime for which he was hanged, then I can think of at least three others, who were complicit in the deaths of far greater numbers of Iraqis, that should have been hanged at the same time. Saddam probably would have appreciated the company.

1 comment:

dogmom86 said...

Saddam Hussein may have been a tyrant, a dictator, a genocidal maniac....but he kept the electricity running more often than it is now. He was anti-communist, anti-Taliban, anti-al Quaeda, and pro- western values of women's equality and education. Sure, he used the weapons the U.S. gave to him; what else would you expect? We paid him to do it, before we didn't. Under Hussein, oil subsidies paid the vast sector of unemployed Iraqis. Sure he screwed his political enemies, the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds, but even after U.S. sanctions, hospitals and medical clinics worked, and oil pipelines were intact. What good is Democracy if everyone is deprived of a means of living. If you can't safely go to school or University, what good is "freedom"?