Saddam Husseins Hanging. Your Opinion?

[quadrapod]

I do not think that Saddam created the violence in Iraq. Personally I believe that the violence in Iraq created Saddam. It took an iron fist to rule an area so overwhelmed with war. And saddam was there to fill the position. As far as democracy in Iraq goes, we can’t force democracy on people who don’t want it. It seems to me that the people in Iraq aren’t ready for democracy and we should stop forcing our ideals on other countries. If we force democracy on them is that not similar to another country forcing America to become communist. (I’m sure someone will catch me on this and insult the relationship but look at it on the most basic level). If the people do want democracy really and truly let them work for it. If they want it have them help us to help them. Now some of them are helping. But is it the majority? Can they really do anything? I don’t really know. What do you think?

[TheBigDog]

The beautiful thing about democracy in Iraq is that it is the fastest way to any other form of government. If the people there do not want democracy they can vote in a government that will change the constitution.

 

Ironically this is also the fastest way to US withdrawal. Vote in an Iraqi government that tells the US to shove off and they will. If there was really that much anti-American sentiment in Iraq then this would have already happened. But the insurgence is such a minority that they have no political power except through terror, and of course building world wide sympathy through cooperative western propaganda.

 

One of the political advantages of executing Saddam is that it removes the possibility of a future elected government granting him a pardon. Remote? Yes, but look at how the Russians are becoming nostalgic for Stalin the past few years. And the sudden revelations here and there about what a just and effective leader Saddam really had been. Really, the Iraqi's are such savages, they need the firm hand of Saddam *heavy sarcasm*.

 

When the Italians shredded Musolini it was disgusting, savage and necessary. It clearly demonstrated that they had no sympathy for the man, and that his ideals were dead in their country. It set the example of public sentiment for change. The Japanese Emporer's unconditional surrender at the end of WWII was another avenue toward closure, one that allowed him to survive. Saddam had this option as well up to the invasion of 2003, but decided otherwise.

 

The fastest way to US withdrawal is success of the Iraqi democracy. If that is the will of the Iraqi government then it will happen. And the first person who calls the elected government of Iraq a US lapdog gets barked at.

 

Execution is a very accepted form of punishment in the Middle East. It is their sensibilities that need to be met, not ours in the west. Having the elected government try, convict and execute him symbolizes their rule of law, and that they are now clearly in power. It was a clear, brutal and necessary step in their social and political system.

 

Bill

[InfiniteNow]

When the Italians shredded Musolini it was disgusting, savage and necessary....

...

It was a clear, brutal and necessary step in their social and political system.

 

It's the "and necessary" part that I think many of us are arguing here, Bill. :eek_big:

[TheFaithfulStone]

Can I imagine myself killing another person?

 

Yes.

 

Why? I can think of two reasons - 1) Me (or somebody else) or them. 2) They really deserve it and I'm good and pissed off.

 

You can jump through a few hoops and say the death penalty is an instance of (1) in a few cases. Some people really are this dangerous.

 

But, most of the time, it's instance (2).

 

How does this sync with it not being okay on the part of an individual to behave that way, yet it's fine for governments to behave that way. What about corporations, which are, in a sense - governed by people much the same way governments are?

 

What gives a government the moral ability to kill somebody? Even if they really, really deserved it (like Saddam.)

 

Saddam got what he deserved, and I'll not shed any tears for him (even if it was a slightly bone-headed political move from a certain perspective.)

 

The real question is how do we rectify our visceral pleasure at seeing the evil get their just deserts with our status as (mostly) rational, caring people?

 

TFS

[IDMclean]

Well for one we change our pleasures and idea of "just deserts".

 

I myself am disappointed to see people like this get released from their flesh-prison. I would have liked to see such a person denied his right to die, so that he may sit and rot for all time, till time itself takes him.

 

You know what I think is just deserts. Compassion and caring the one thing which Saddam never gave. Lock him away in a padded room. Feed him, give him excersice and treat him generally more humanely than he treated the people he mass murdered. Deny him the right of assisted suicide (execution). In the end (might take some years, but it will happen eventually) he would beg for death, for his wrongs would naw at his conscious.

 

Doing this would be the greatest punishment you could inflict upon him. Why? It would contrast his treatment of others with the treatment of himself. Which would give him context. Killing him releases him from his moral duties. Killing him is giving him the stage exit. Once he is dead he can suffer no more.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Isn't in a sense that actually more cruel than just offing him? Since you are treating him kindly in order that he might suffer, and not because he is deserving of kind treatment?

 

TFS

[HydrogenBond]

The debate about the demise of Saddam Hussein is a contrast between long and short term thinking. To look at the hanging using short term thinking one sees a man being sent to his death. This causes one to empathize with him, as though he is a victim of an unjust act. If we disfuse the narrow beam of short term thinking and look at the bigger picture of his life, this one black dot against humanity, becomes lost by all the black dots of death he inflicted on others during its life as a dictator. If we narrow the time scale beam back to only his dot of death, we forget about his life, because we can't see it, and thereby lose sight of his brutal actions.

 

If Saddam had been killed during the original seige of Bagdad under Bush I, that black dot of death would have been seen situated among the many black dots of his immediate life even by short term thinkers. It would have been seen as a righteous kill. His imprisonment and trial causes a gap in Saddam's black dot production (by default but not by choice), such that the narrow beam of short term thinking is unable to see any of his previous black dots, causing them to judge the hanging out of context with the big picture. Long term thinkers can expand their angle of sight into the big picture and draw a more logical conclusion based on all the data and not just one short term data point.

[Buffy]

I myself am disappointed to see people like this get released from their flesh-prison. I would have liked to see such a person denied his right to die, so that he may sit and rot for all time, till time itself takes him.

Which is the main reason you don't see a vote from me here: what is worse punishment? Instant release or a life of torture? How does one define torture? If he weren't in my mind such a sociopath, seeing those people gassed on his orders over and over again each night could be a fate worse than death.

 

Hard to say as far as I'm concerned....

 

All for Just Desserts,

Buffy

[IDMclean]

Well who said justice had to be kind? He killed thousands of people. Why should he be treated kindness for kindness sake? I do believe he should suffer for what he has done, and I do believe that he should suffer as much if not more than the families that he has so wronged.

 

 

Also, yes, yes, it is more cruel which is why I advocate it. I am not a nice person when I have been wronged, or when other have been wronged. However I refuse to step outside of the ethical circle in order to deliver justice. I believe in enlightened justice, and killing a person is not enlightened. It stoops to their level.

 

The difference being key. Saddam took those people's choice to live. The resiprocal would seem just. Take Saddam's choice to die. Where as the people he killed suffer no more once dead, but the families do. Saddam lives to suffer as the families do, and in kind can come to understand the magnitude of the wrong he committed.

 

So yes, it is more cruel than letting him have the suicide he has sought. He has choosen his consequences, and now it is only ethical of us to assist him in seeing those consequences to the end, in such a way as to keep the rest of society safe from him and him safe from society so that he may live out his suffering.

[TheFaithfulStone]

Is the morality of an act divorced entirely from it's motivations?

 

If it's sometimes ethical to inflict suffering, why can't it sometimes be ethical to kill people?

 

TFS

[just playing it out]

[Freddy]

I do not think that Saddam created the violence in Iraq. Personally I believe that the violence in Iraq created Saddam. It took an iron fist to rule an area so overwhelmed with war. And saddam was there to fill the position. As far as democracy in Iraq goes, we can’t force democracy on people who don’t want it. It seems to me that the people in Iraq aren’t ready for democracy and we should stop forcing our ideals on other countries. If we force democracy on them is that not similar to another country forcing America to become communist. (I’m sure someone will catch me on this and insult the relationship but look at it on the most basic level). If the people do want democracy really and truly let them work for it. If they want it have them help us to help them. Now some of them are helping. But is it the majority? Can they really do anything? I don’t really know. What do you think?

Saddam was involved in three coups in Iraq. First, in 1959 and second in 1968 when he became second in power in Iraq. Both coups were done with some CIA involvement. Saddam worked for several decades in the Ba'ath Party and gained control of it. Next, he persuaded the head of Iraq to step down in 1979 as Saddam seized power. Shortly after he invaded Iran and began an eight year war ended in over 1 million deaths. The US gave Iraq loans worth several billion and military help in the war against Iran its new enemy. Saddam continued his violent ways by killing countless thousands Iraqi Shiites and Kurds. Saddam created his own monster by using force and butchery against his enemies who were his own people. There are reasons millions of Shiites and Kurds hated Saddam. He never attempted to bring the factions in Iraq together peacefully. Whether or not he would have succeeded I have no idea.

 

As far as the current US war in Iraq I say get out asap. Let the three factions decide through war or peace their future. It is their country.

[IDMclean]

The difference here is in the source of the infliction.

 

Torture would indicate that an external agent is inflicting the suffering upon the tortured individual. This is no such thing. The source of suffering would come from his own conscious, as it should.

 

He has caused suffering unduly upon those who did not ask for it. By his actions he has brought upon himself the consequences of that action. That he be confined away from humanity to think about what he has done. To consider the consequences of his actions.

 

This is how one would treat an unrulely child. Time out for wrong action with explicit instructions to consider the actions taken and the consequences of those actions.

 

Of course suffering is the effect of this, that is what happens when you perform actions that are counter to constructive aims. That is what happens when you take the choice of another. That is what empathy is. When you can put yourself into the place of another.

 

Perhaps what I describe is not suffering so much as the end result of the realization of compassion, but either way it leads more in the direction that is constructive to society overall. It is more moral than taking his life, ending his ability to choose.

 

For a suicidal individual, who has not the courage to take their own life, murder is an acceptable action. I know, I considered that when I was suicidal. The end result I know of that action would be most likely my death.

 

In the infamous words of the T-101 character of T2. "I can not self terminate". If anyone is familiar with the concept of suicide by cop, you will understand what I mean. Some people seek death by inappropiate means (IE: Murder).

 

In anycase Ideally it the society would rehabilitate such individuals, not that I think current society is up to snuff, nor do I think they would accept people like Hussein working at their supermarkets, but the sooner we practice such methods, the sooner we can develop methods to guarantee resocialization and socialization of any individual.

 

In anycase, there is reasonable evidence to support that the Death Penalty does not do what it is sometimes claimed to do, reduce reoccuring instances of the proscription crime. To reduce instances of brutual crimes. As I have said, if we are thinking of children, which I firmly believe everyone to be at heart, our deeds set the status quo. Our words have meaning surely, but that meaning is practically lost when our actions don't match.

 

So like with children, we must lead by example. We must show compassion to those who have not shown compassion. This is to set the standard, and to eventually improve the standard. If we seek to eliminate terrorism, then we must not stoop to using terrorism, justified as war or not.

 

We must eliminate the very actions we seek to diminish or remove from our own body (either individually or socially) before we can remove it from outside our sphere of influence.

 

You can not show that killing is wrong by killing another. You can not show that violence is wrong by committing violence. You can not halt war by starting war. This is by simple identity.

 

Hence why it is more moral to rehabilitate the offender than euthanize them. You can not correct a wrong with a wrong. It is simple as that.

[hallenrm]

Leaving ethics and morally aside for a moment, let us consider what prompts individuals like Saddam to become ruthless dictators, ( and Saddam was and is not the only one)? Isn't the seeds of such behavior prevalent in our society. Whenever, one is faced with situations in which one has to constantly face humiliation for the self, or the people closest to him/her, one is often prompted to follow methods that are not very popular (humanly) to get an upper hand. I think, and I may be wrong, the genesis of Saddam's reprehensible actions against some of his countrymen, lies in the actions of the imperialistic American regime that spare anybody or no country that does not follow its dictum. Saddam was no exception. As long as he was useful for US designs, he was a darling, but as and when he became more ambitious and daring, to challenge the America, he was dubbed as a ruthless criminal by the same administration.

In short, what I intend to say, before any one of us passes a judgment on the behavior of Saddam while he was the President of Iraq, think for a moment, doesn't super powerful behavior on the part of anyone, encourage actions like those of Saddam. Aren't there skeletons like those visible now in Iraq, present in the cupboards of each and every successful and powerful politician. Unfortunately success in politics invariably follows ruthlessness and merciless killings as those ordered by Saddam.

[Buffy]

So are you saying he couldn't help himself?

 

That's BS. You're a white suburban punk just like me, :evil:

Buffy

[IDMclean]

My interp of Hallenrm's post is thus.

 

We, as in america though not exclusively so, contribute directly and/or indirectly to the enviroment that developed Saddam Hussein. America is my main target in this though because Saddam as one can easily find with a little research was a CIA lacky, and like Osama was trained (at least in part) by the CIA for CIA backed operations.

 

This is not to say necessarily that we are as guilty, but that we are not innocent. The events that follow are in part the responisibility of the people of the world. It is not just the child or the student that is responsible for their failure. It is also the failure of the parents, or the teachers.

 

Dictators are not created or destroyed, merely converted from one form to another (including live to dead; practicing to reformed, etc). :evil: In this way the world socio-economic enviroment serves as a catalyst for the formation of the various sub-agents. Which I think of in terms of a game, in which the form (the system) influences the probabilities so that certain events become more probable.

 

That's the model I have come to understand the complex interactions by anyway. A combonation of the individual (and how they are shaped) and the system the individual is submerged into (like the violent, and almost feudal local enviroment that Saddam was part of).

[TheBigDog]

We, as in america though not exclusively so, contribute directly and/or indirectly to the enviroment that developed Saddam Hussein. America is my main target in this though because Saddam as one can easily find with a little research was a CIA lacky, and like Osama was trained (at least in part) by the CIA for CIA backed operations.

Put up or recant. I'll check back in a week.

 

Bill

[IDMclean]

Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden, and the Taliban by Phil Gasper

International Socialist Review, November-December 2001

 

Wikipedia, Entry 38 of sources for Osama Bin Laden

.

The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means. Guardian Unlimited. Retrieved on 2005-07-08.

 

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

 

Wikipedia: Indirectly through the Bush family to the Bin Laden Family (Bush Senior, of course was what? Director of the CIA.)

 

Wikipedia: Afghanistan, U.S. aid to the Anti-Communist factions during 1979

 

The Largest Covert Operation in CIA History By Chalmers Johnson

 

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan

 

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Hardcover) http://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wars-Afghanistan-Invasion-September/dp/1594200076

 

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

 

Wikipedia: CIA Support for Iraq, and Saddam Hussein

 

Taking out the CIA's Trash

 

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot

By RICHARD SALE

UPI Intelligence Correspondent

 

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

 

Rumsfeld and his 'old friend' Saddam

By Jim Lobe

 

Democracy Now, Is Saddam Hussein a Creation of the CIA?

Democracy Now, A Look at How the CIA Backed and Financed Saddam Hussein 40 Years Ago in An Effort to Assassinate Iraq's Then Prime Minster

 

Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II-Updated Through 2003 (Paperback) http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Hope-Military-Interventions-II-Updated/dp/1567512526/sr=1-1/qid=1167897021/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3476330-0998858?ie=UTF8&s=books

 

Wikipedia: Killing Hope

Wikipedia: List of United States military history events, 1960-1969

 

Ah and if that isn't enough, it seems that we can look forward to more newer models in the coming decade.

 

CIA will train Hussein's henchmen as spies

The Bush administration has authorized creation of an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government, according to U.S. government officials.

 

The new service will be trained, financed and equipped largely by the CIA with help from Jordan. Initially the agency will be headed by Iraqi Interior Minister Nouri Badran, a secular Shiite and activist in the Jordan-based Iraqi National Accord, a former exile group that includes former Baath Party military and intelligence officials.

 

If you have any questions, do ask. I hope that is sufficient for now.