« Canine linguist | Main | Start the year with a laugh »
December 31, 2006
Saddam Hussein and the depravity of the left
The reaction to the execution of Saddam Hussein predictably falls along partisan lines: those who recognize the difference between good and evil (i.e., conservatives) celebrate the death of this monster as Justice with a capital "J"; those who pay obeisance to the credo of moral relativism, literary deconstructionism and America, democracy and capitalism as the root of all evil (i.e., the Left) mourn his death as a savage indictment of the United States and its bloodthirsty, retrograde "Christianist" neo-cons.
There are round-ups giving you a sense of the depths of moonbat-rage, revealed in spittle-flecked rants on sites like the Huffington Post, but I think this passage from a New York Times piece (what a surprise!) is as good as any for lifting the lid on the tangled mess that is the psyche of a very modern Western liberal.
NOBODY who experienced Iraq under the tyranny of Saddam Hussein could imagine, at the height of the terror he imposed on his countrymen, ever pitying him. Pitiless himself, he sent hundreds of thousands of his countrymen to miserable deaths, in the wars he started against Iran and Kuwait, in the torture chambers of his secret police, or on the gallows that became an industry at Abu Ghraib and other charnel houses across Iraq. Iraqis who were caught in his spider’s web of evil, and survived, tell of countless tortures, of the psychopathic pleasure the former dictator appeared to take from inflicting suffering and death.
Yet there was a moment when I pitied him, and it came back to me after the nine Iraqi appeal judges upheld the death sentence against Saddam last week, setting off the countdown to his execution.
[...]
Many Iraqis, perhaps most, will spare no sympathies for him. However much he may have suffered in the end, they will say, it could never be enough to atone for a long dark night he imposed on his people. Still, there was that moment, on July 1, 2004, when Saddam became, for me, if only briefly, an object of compassion.
[...]
From 20 feet away on an observer’s bench, seated beside the late Peter Jennings of ABC News and Christiane Amanpour of CNN, I caught my first glimpse of the man who had become in my years of visiting Iraq under his rule, a figure of mythic brutality, a man so feared that the mention of his name would set the hard, unsmiling men assigned to visiting reporters as “minders” to shaking with fear, and on one occasion, in my experience, to abject weeping.
But this was not that Saddam. The man who stepped into the court had the demeanor of a condemned man, his eyes swiveling left, then right, his gait unsteady, his curious, lisping voice raised to a tenor that resonated fear.
[...]
At that instant, I felt sorry for him, as a man in distress and perhaps, too, as a once almighty figure reduced to ignominy. But the expression of that pity to the Iraqis present marked the distance between those, like me, who had taken the measure of Saddam’s terror as a visitor, shielded from the worst of it by the minders and the claustrophobic world of closely guarded hotels and supervised Information Ministry trips, and Iraqis who lived through it with no shield.
That I could feel pity for him struck the Iraqis with whom I talked as evidence of a profound moral corruption. I came to understand how a Westerner used to the civilities of democracy and due process — even a reporter who thought he grasped the depths of Saddam’s depravity — fell short of the Iraqis’ sense, forged by years of brutality, of the power of his unmitigated evil.
I can't think of a better way to describe the expression of pity for a sadistic, tyrannical, mass-murdering aficionado of torture like Hussein than "evidence of a profound moral corruption."
It is to the author's credit that he was self-aware enough to pen the words, but it is to his everlasting shame that he could feel anything for the barbaric Iraqi other than contempt and relief that he would soon draw his last breath.
And my contempt for the writer is fed by this statement near the beginning of the article.
As I write this, flying hurriedly back to Baghdad from an interrupted Christmas break, Saddam makes his own trip to the gallows with an indecent haste, without the mercy of family farewells and other spare acts of compassion that lend at least a pretense of civility to executions under law in kinder jurisdictions. From all we know of the preparations, Saddam’s death was to be a miserable and lonely one, as stark and undignified as Iraq’s new rulers can devise.
Please, spare me the hand-wringing concern over the poor treatment meted out to the condemned fiend, who was denied access to the most valued concepts in the liberal lexicon: "mercy," "compassion," and "civility" for those who not only denied the same to their victims, but gloried, reveled in the suffering of their victims.
What Hussein got was justice -- not the full measure, for even the Iraqis would not stoop so far as to inflict upon their tormentor the same fiendishly perverse punishments he meted out during his long reign of terror.
And thanks to the swift imposition of the death sentence, other tyrants must sleep just a little less soundly, which ain't a bad thing, either.
Posted by Mike Lief at December 31, 2006 10:36 AM
| TrackBack
Comments
This was something I wrote in an email to some family members who asked me my opinion about Saddam's execution. They thought that he should've been left to rot in prison. Here is what I said...
My first reaction was that it was wrong as well, but I thought it over, going over the facts, and I came to different conclusion. I believe it was the right thing to do, and here's why. I don't expect anyone to agree, this is just my opinion. You know what they say about opinions...
Though it is unlikely that he ever would have, now, because he is executed, he will never have a chance to repent of his sins and be able to make peace with God. Spiritually, that is the saddest thing of all. However, while he was incarcerated during his trial, he was still orchestrating murders and assassinations. Like you said, Aunt Janet, he still ruled even during his trial. Therefore, in strictest interpretations of the Church's stance on the death penalty, he was a threat even in prison. This threat, in my opinion, and this is rare for me, warranted his death.
If he had allowed to remain alive in prison, who knows how much havoc he could have caused? Iraq is not like the U.S. with all the prisoner security protocols we have in place, and even still, we have gang members ordering murders from inside our prisons here in the U.S. How much more so could Saddam have done for the remaining years of his life in an Iraqi prison? I think that he was very dangerous even behind bars, considering that judges and lawyers were murdered during his trial. Because of that, for the safety of others, he forfeited his right to life.
Hanging is the customary form of execution in Iraq, though we find it distasteful here in the U.S. As for the citizens being mesmerized by by his execution, what we don't realize is that they live in that kind of culture that doesn't have same respect for life as we do here in the West. They see this kind of thing all the time, so they are very jaded to seeing death, even at a very young age. But we also shouldn't allow ourselves to be swayed by misguided compassion in allowing someone to live who presents a such grave threat, not just to those around him, but possibly to many people.
Furthermore, people need to be able to trust the government to enforce the laws. It is the responsibility of any just government to carry out justice according to its laws and customs, and if it fails to do so it will lose the confidence of the people. Despite what is spewed out on the evening news and the papers and big news magazines, I have heard from 1st hand accounts that Saddam was widely reviled and feared, and the vast majority of the populace were overjoyed when he was overthrown and later sentenced to death. Had the Iraqi government failed to execute him as is customary under Muslim and Iraqi law, it would make the new government weak, and embolden it's enemies, and strengthen Saddam's allies, possibly even returning him to power after the U.S. leaves Iraq. If he had remained alive, it would have been a political loose thread to unravel.
Sometimes the severity of the crimes demand the harsh sentence. Carrying out proper justice never makes one equal to the criminal, even though the sentence may be harsh.
Posted by: sonarman at January 2, 2007 10:36 PM