Vengeance, not justice
I don’t have much more to say about Saddam Hussein’s execution.
I wrote about it extensively before it took place — see here — and, at The Reaction, Creature wrote the words I was searching for in a subsequent post — see here: “I feel sad, not for Saddam, but for what we have become.”
This was America’s doing, and America should not have allowed it to happen. To the extent that Iraq was involved, I argued at the time, it was vengeance, not justice. The video of the execution is out there — I won’t link to a site that has posted it, but you can find it easily — and what we see is that Saddam was taunted by his executioners. And those executioners were Shiite. They did not represent any sort of “new” Iraq. And two of the guards shouted “Moqtada,” referring to Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose militia is very much at the center of the sectarian violence that has thrown post-Saddam Iraq into civil war. And one of the guards shouted that Saddam had “destroyed us” and “killed us”. Us. Saddam was executed not just by those linked by sectarian attachment to his victims but by Iraqi sectarianism itself. He was a tyrant, to be sure, but he was also from the other side, a Sunni. Would these executioners have behaved the same way towards a condemned Shiite tyrant? Surely not.
Saddam was convicted specifically of a crime against Shiites, but, to repeat, this was not justice, it was vengeance. What Iraq needs is justice, not vengeance, but perhaps this execution of vengeance reflects the state of Iraq today. There is no justice in Iraq.
The Times has a recount of the execution here.
I had no compassion for Saddam, just as I had no compassion for Milosevic or Pinochet, just as I have no compassion for Kim Jong-il or any of the other tyrants who still commit crimes against humanity, but compassion has nothing to do with this. What matters is justice. What matters is the rule of law as some sort of imperfect reflection of justice.
There was no justice in Iraq under Saddam, but nor was there any justice for Saddam himself. Did he deserve justice? There are many who say no. There are many who say that, justice or no, Saddam got what he deserved, or that he deserved far worse.
But are we not better than Saddam? Should not the “new” Iraq be better than Saddam? Should there not be justice in the “new” Iraq?
Or is this what we have become?
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6 Responses to “Vengeance, not justice”
Why do you feel there was no justice? I am not a big fan of executions, but in this case I feel the execution was just.
Sometimes, people need to get a bit of vengeance out of their system before they can move on. My hope is that letting the Shiites take out their hostilities against Saddam will ease some of the psychological pressure, and they will feel less need to take out those hostilities against the Sunnis who benefited so greatly during the Saddam regime.
And there was ample justice for Saddam, anyway. He had a real trial, which proved that he did indeed order the unjust execution of innocent children. He was not allowed to use that trial as a platform to incite defiance against the new government of Iraq, because such was irrelevant to the charges against him.
Lets look at it this way…if the executions after the Nuremburg trials had been carried out by Jewish holocaust survivors instead of the Allies, would that have made it “vengence” instead of “Justice”? Of course not…it is a silly argument to make.
Are you really shocked and appaled that folks have stronger attachment to their families, their religion, their group etc., than to some Platonic ideal of “justice”? “Justice” can only happen if you are “pure of spirit” and have no other motivation?? (How very 12th century of you.)
We might find the shia behavior distastful, but I know I haven’t walked a mile in their shoes.
I think the people who push the hardest for him to have gone to the Hague are simply those who don’t think that anyone, no matter how heinous their crimes may be and how solid the evidence should ever be subject to capital punishment.
Jim S. makes a good point. I think part of the problem I see is that a lot of people oppose capital punishment under any circumnstances, and simply define it as being vengance instead of justice. However, that really limits the understanding of what can be consider justice, by stipulating that punishment is never an act of justice.
I think Mr. Hussein received justice, and it was much more fair and humane than what many of his victims received. I think the punishment fit the crime. For those who feel that there is virtually no grounds where capital punishment is acceptible, there is nothing that would make Hussein’s execution just. However, I think that such a definition of justice is out of line with the concept of justice that many people around the world accept.
I really have little faith in rehabilitation instead of punishment for killers. Additionally, it is pretty clear that virtually no government that claims to enact life sentences really applies that standard. Life in prison in most European nations is not life, but something like 20 years. Personally, I don’t think that a 20 year sentence is reasonable for a Milosovic or Hussein. If convicted, and the appeal finds the conviction is just, then the execution should not wait for months just to satisfy the anti-death penalty crowd.
If I had no other reason for supporting the death penalty, the lack of consistency on the principle that underlies opposition to capital punishment by most of its opponants would be sufficient for me. As I’ve said before, the Catholics, and some other religious groups that absolutely oppose all killing, including abortion are being consistent in the way they apply their moral and intellectual framework. I don’t agree with them, but I respect them. As for sympathy for Saddam Hussein, I have none. He deserved what he got.
In another sense, I think the objections to the death penalty, especially in this context, are examples of western liberal thought trying to impose itself where it is not wanted, just like our president’s effort at following in President Wilson’s footsteps. Wilson tried to ‘teach the Mexicans to elect good men,’ and it was completely unsuccessful. Mexico was unstable, in the middle of a revolution with various military strong men coming and going with varying degrees of public support. Mruder, executions, and general anarchy were the order of the day. Iraq is also in the middle of such a revolution. I don’t think it was wise to facilitate it, but having gotten it started, there is not much we can do except get out of the way. Wilson had the ability to cover his exit from the failed expeditions in Mexico with the European war; President Bush is going to have to find a way out of Iraq, but probably with less opportunity for his failed exploits to be forgotten.
I do not think the anarchy and blood letting in Iraq will end soon. But I don’t buy the argument that Saddam Hussein’s execution was vengance instead of justice; it was vengance, but as an aspect of justice. The US has been criticized for trying to force its concept of democracy on parts of the world that don’t want it. There is some fairness in that criticism. It is equally true that the western (especially western European) concept of justice is probably not what the Iraqis are seeking, and they will resent efforts by the EU or other western powers to force them to comply.
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