Quote:
Originally Posted by mini mission
im shocked your shocked that saddam was executed!
he deserved to be executed after everything he did...he murdered thousands of people,women and children,...he took pleasure in torturing people...a guy like that has no right to life,and i was glad to see justice done by his own people...why would you feel saddened at the death of this monster?....
as for executing aussie teenagers,that is out of order!
|
Well, I'm shocked that you're shocked that I'm shocked that.... no doubt we could continue along these lines for some time but I'm sure we'd both be overly shocked or bored by then.
This is a big issue and one with many seeming contradictions. For example, while I state that I believe unreservedly that the death penalty is abhorrent, immoral and fundamentally wrong.... I also believe in a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, not as a means of contraception - because that is just plain irresponsibility - but when that is the choice that *must* be made. I also fully support euthenasia when it is conducted responsibly, compassionately and humanely.
But as a punishment...? To take a life...? Well, this raises all sorts of questions for me, particularly in the case of a high profile leader such as Saddam Hussein. And don't get me wrong.... I agree that the acts of atrocity carried out under his leadership were despicable, disgusting and no less a travesty against human beings than any other state sanctioned act of violence. But it is this very travesty which prevents me from condoning the state sanctioned murder of an individual in the name of the law - regardless of who it happens to be.
And, how far do we go? Given your logic for the execution of Hussein, should George Bush Jnr, or even his Dad for that matter, still be alive? The list of atrocities carried out by the United States, for example, is very long indeed. I really don't know how you can quantify or qualify atrocities.... Saddam Hussein is executed for his role, yet other "despots" roam free?
The use of depleted uranium in Iraq runs far up the list for me of unforgivable crimes against humanity. Have you seen any pictures of irradiated and deformed children born in Iraq? Or Iraqi children born with tumors that squeeze out their facial features or internal organs? Hiroshima and Nagasaki have warned us well that it won't just be that generation that suffers. Even now, nearly 63 years after those tragic events, children are still born deformed, sick and dying and generations of people continue to suffer. What ever happened to Harry Truman? Was he executed for signing off on a death sentence to hundreds of thousands of Japanese people?
And what of our individual rights and responsibilities as human beings? Does Saddam Hussein carry all the responsibility for the atrocities carried out under his leadership? Those who carried out his orders may not have had a choice in the situation they found themselves in.... but they had a *choice* in what they did about it. There is always a choice, as many people persecuted for resisting the order to kill can attest.
What of the brilliant scientific minds and the manufacturers of weapons, including chemical and nuclear weapons, who profit from war? While "guns don't kill people, people kill people" may hold true, the fact remains.... it takes a government to endorse them, a manufacturer to create them and a market to distribute them. Saddam definitely had help in committing his particular acts of violence. He didn't just wake one morning and wish it to be.... and so it was. The chain of responsibility reaches far and wide and at every point along it there is a CHOICE.
I don't rely on arbitrary rules to define my stance on the death penalty - it comes from a firm and committed belief that in any situation, state sanctioned murder - whether lawful or not - is unjust, unmerciful and wrong.
In the case of the Bali 9, it really does become so much more emotional because they are all young and their "crimes" don't exactly compare to those of, let's say, Saddam Hussein. And they are Australians, which adds to the emotional weight. I admit that I would find campaigning for Husseins life, or the lives of the Bali bombers so much more unpallatable than the Bali 9, for example. I am aware of my own biases which tell me that murdering and torturing thousands of people is far more significant than strapping a few kilos of heroin to your body. (Hardly enough to "flood" the Australian market, btw. And even heroin users have choices to make.)
But, when I weigh up my own sense of humanity, I really have no choice. In the case of the death penalty, I disagree with it fundamentally and without question and even if I can judge one life more worthy than another, I totally oppose the "right" of any state to take a life in punishment.
What a croc
Execution style (altered)
"
