On capital punishment and related questions
Yesterday Saddam Hussein finally kicked off. And I'm frankly disturbed at how...gleeful...the American media's coverage of it has been. Today my mom's Fox News (I'd like to disclaim right now that I was watching the tripe by choice) would not shut up about how the horrid, vile man was finally dead. All while barely giving lip service to the funeral of our own late President Ford. Just now I had the distinct displeasure to watch crappy footage taken from a cell phone of Hussein's last moments. The obsession that American media is giving this is really toeing the line with morbid.
That is, and I really can't think of a descriptor that would be more accurate, simply fucked up.
Every headline I'm seeing is crowing about "justice being dealt" et cetera, and while I'm certainly not crying over the slimeball, it truly doesn't feel just. While quite firmly against capital punishment for other reasons, (past discussion on the subject may be found here, chez dominonermandi) I think America's reaction to Hussein's death to be quite telling. The ending of a life should never be met with happiness or glee. Perhaps relief if you want, but something as serious as someone's death needs to be appreciated with the gravity it deserves. No one should be glad to carry such a task out, it should be something marked up as duty, something that must be done to serve justice. And setting examples to one's population that yes, we will kill our citizens, is not a good practice psychologically. Perhaps this is a good example: at a time when America is rejoicing at a death half the globe away, it's no wonder that they place so little value on human life that they'd piss it away in a politically and financially ridiculous war. All in the name of some vague "justice."
The politics of the thing are another thing that irks me about Hussein's death. In a political sense it was a ridiculously stupid move. Traditionally human rights abuses of such a magnitude as Hussein's would have been brought to The Hague, which incidentally doesn't use capital punishment. But instead he was tried in his own country and killed very soon after a trial which had many obvious irregularities. (Such as, you know, having several of the defense's lawyers killed.) If that doesn't sound sketchy, I don't know what does. It makes the whole affair look like a half-assed usurpation of power rather than a first move for a freshly created judicial system. An undermining of credibility is the last thing al-Maliki's government can use right now.
And perhaps worse, it makes him look like a martyr, as shown by footage of hundreds of Iraqis mourning Hussein's death that is also plastered all over the news. The obvious way of thinking is that killing Hussein would help hinder the insurgency's efforts (after all, can't reinstate a dead dictator, can you?), but like so many conflicts I think the point has been reached where people aren't fighting for something specific anymore, but they're fighting because they're angry and desperate and that's just what they've always done, what else is there? Killing Hussein won't supress violence, it'll just give Iraqis one more thing to be pissed about.
And in conclusuion, I find it slightly freaky that this song just came up on iTunes shuffle...
* * *
Speaking of dominonermandi, I'm seeing her tomorrow evening, along with the lovely maruchina, to be followed by jaunting in New York the next day. Stoked.
That is, and I really can't think of a descriptor that would be more accurate, simply fucked up.
Every headline I'm seeing is crowing about "justice being dealt" et cetera, and while I'm certainly not crying over the slimeball, it truly doesn't feel just. While quite firmly against capital punishment for other reasons, (past discussion on the subject may be found here, chez dominonermandi) I think America's reaction to Hussein's death to be quite telling. The ending of a life should never be met with happiness or glee. Perhaps relief if you want, but something as serious as someone's death needs to be appreciated with the gravity it deserves. No one should be glad to carry such a task out, it should be something marked up as duty, something that must be done to serve justice. And setting examples to one's population that yes, we will kill our citizens, is not a good practice psychologically. Perhaps this is a good example: at a time when America is rejoicing at a death half the globe away, it's no wonder that they place so little value on human life that they'd piss it away in a politically and financially ridiculous war. All in the name of some vague "justice."
The politics of the thing are another thing that irks me about Hussein's death. In a political sense it was a ridiculously stupid move. Traditionally human rights abuses of such a magnitude as Hussein's would have been brought to The Hague, which incidentally doesn't use capital punishment. But instead he was tried in his own country and killed very soon after a trial which had many obvious irregularities. (Such as, you know, having several of the defense's lawyers killed.) If that doesn't sound sketchy, I don't know what does. It makes the whole affair look like a half-assed usurpation of power rather than a first move for a freshly created judicial system. An undermining of credibility is the last thing al-Maliki's government can use right now.
And perhaps worse, it makes him look like a martyr, as shown by footage of hundreds of Iraqis mourning Hussein's death that is also plastered all over the news. The obvious way of thinking is that killing Hussein would help hinder the insurgency's efforts (after all, can't reinstate a dead dictator, can you?), but like so many conflicts I think the point has been reached where people aren't fighting for something specific anymore, but they're fighting because they're angry and desperate and that's just what they've always done, what else is there? Killing Hussein won't supress violence, it'll just give Iraqis one more thing to be pissed about.
And in conclusuion, I find it slightly freaky that this song just came up on iTunes shuffle...
* * *
Speaking of dominonermandi, I'm seeing her tomorrow evening, along with the lovely maruchina, to be followed by jaunting in New York the next day. Stoked.