Saddam and capital punishment - 5 comments
As consistent opponents of capital punishment I hope we can join in:
- Condemning the execution of Saddam Hussein.
- Applauding his (flawed, perhaps, but essentially fair) trial, and conviction.
- Agreeing that even the tiny proportion of his crimes brought before the court entitled him to the most severe punishment possible under the law.
- Peacefully (and consistently) lobbying all governments that practice capital punishment, in order to end the practice.
I'm sure some will hijack this debate in order to push their own politics (for more, see here) - references to "predictability", "convenient outcomes", "loss of moral high ground", "democracy failing first test", etc. will abound, but, frankly, I haven't got time to spend trawling through the morally vacuous responses to find the few principled ones. Nor should we be distracted from the long, tedious work of persuasion, by those for whom "Iraq" is just a stage for their own exciting political theatre.
Labels: capital punishment, Iraq, Saddam Hussein
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5 comments so far...
The execution of Saddam Hussein must be condemned outright. As a member of the Labour Party in Ireland I remain convinced that there is no place for the death penalty in a modern civilised society. Saddam Hussein should have been brought to justice and spent the rest of his days in prison.
We are here wasting ink on the death of a well known mass murderer and two of his Baathist allies, agreed the judicial means could have been improved upon but in the end the death penalty is appropriate.
Isn't there a socialist international campaign against captial punishment going on?
Well Tom, perhaps we could start something.
It's all well and good opponents of the war saying "he should spend the rest of his life in prison" when had they had their way he'd be spending the rest of his life as president.
The trial was infinitely fairer than any trial he gave any of his opponents. And the sentence? I for one will not be shedding any tears.
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