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Saddam Execution: Good for America?

Thunder

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big question of the month...was saddam's execution good for america?

i personally dont think the death penalty is a wise decision..whether it be saddam hussein or the murderer on the street. i think it sends a hypocritical message about how society values life.

keep in mind, i do believe that saddam deserved to die. i do believe it is justice that he be executed. but just because it is just..and is deserved..doesnt mean its smart.

saddam will now be a martyr to millions. there are saddam t shirts being printed right now. but more importantly, saddam was tried for violating the human rights of others. so to punish him..we are killing him. i think the best way to punish a terrible lack of respect for life..is to show that our society DOES respect life.

even though saddam deserves hanging..and it is justice..i think it would have sent a powerful message if we told him "we are not going to kill you..we are going to let you rot in prison. because unlike you, we value human life, even of scum like you".

its just like zacharias moussaoiu. he wanted to kill thousands...but we are better then him..and spared his life. maybe he deserved death...but thats not the point. we showed him, and islamic extremists, that we value life, even of scumbags, but they value only death.
 
I personally would have liked the case tried at the world court. It would have removed the emotion of US/Iraq involvement. And he would have spent the rest of his life in jail, well away from the action
 
Some good. Mostly bad.

Good because it shows that Iraq can handle its own courts. The US wasn't involved (at least not obviously) so our hands are clean.

Bad because we lost a potential source of great information, may have created a martyr, fueled idiotic conspiracy theories, and made it clear that allowing the killing of leaders is a part of our "foreign policy". Plus, there is the small but non-zero possibility that Saddam would see the light and become a force for peace.

By analogy, in his last run for Alabama Governer, George Wallace was a liberal on racial issues. Leopards can change their spots.
 
Tough question. Might have been good for America. One is safest from an individual once they are dead. Might have been bad for America. It's hard to be a martyr when one is still alive. I don't know.
 
This has to be one of the most expensive and drawn out assassination of a head of state in history.

I too would have preferred a "fair" world court trial (with a hanging afterwards).

I don't believe it was "good " for the US. It might have had some value if it had happened prior to an election cycle.

No doubt, Saddam was bad guy and rightly deserved to die.

Charlie (what about the other bad guys in the world?) Monoxide
 
parky76 said:
i personally dont think the death penalty is a wise decision..whether it be saddam hussein or the murderer on the street. i think it sends a hypocritical message about how society values life.
Click to expand...

Well, the death penalty is enforced in Iraq, so it's an Iraqi decision based on Iraqi law.

It's not our place to criticize Iraqi "society".
 
so if iraq becomes a religous extremist state...thats makes sharia part of the law of the land..we have no right to critisize?

id hate to see all our tax dollars go to make a new iran.
 
As far as I know, the coalition forces and the present Iraqi government are trying really hard to make this new Iraq democratic and working.

I don't know what you are talking about Parky.
 
parky76 said:
big question of the month...was saddam's execution good for america?
Click to expand...
America isn't the issue, it isn't all about US. ;)

Saddam's hanging was perhaps cathartic for some Iraqis, but I don't think it can be counted as anything positive for America, nor for American policy. His capture in December 2003 was the limit of his symbolic and political value to Washington. All after that was a game played out in the political arena. As I see it, his execution is the punctuation mark on the failures of the US foreign policy of "we can't work with these people -- unless they have nukes." (Ref to Kim Jong Il.)

Diplomacy is the art of working with people who you don't care for, be it at the personal level or at the national level. On the day the troops crossed the LD, that policy was put to the test. It doesn't seem to impress anyone in Teheran. It doesn't seem to have advanced US long term strategic interests all that much.

The various spin masters pro and con will try to frame this hanging as good, bad, indifferent. It solves nothing beyond the desire, now fulfilled, for justice in the eyes of some. The trial as a farce is well documented in the media as a show trial for the bogus charge of the "crimes against humanity" category of the victor's justice. The execution of a few of his lawyers tell the real story of what Iraq is about: a land of emotion, not reason. All this execution does is take him out of the political game writ large, which he played to the bitter end as a defendant in the trial for his life.

I wonder if he'll get the virgins he might hope for in Paradise, join the usual gang of miscreants burning for eternity, or if he'll just add to the fertilizer count in a graveyard somewhere in Tikrit. I won't know until I have ?crossed the bar."

In any case, his hanging materially changes nothing for Iraq in the here and now, nor for the future, other than to furnish another symbol for some parties to rally around.

DR
 
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parky76 said:
big question of the month...was saddam's execution good for america?

i personally dont think the death penalty is a wise decision..whether it be saddam hussein or the murderer on the street. i think it sends a hypocritical message about how society values life.

keep in mind, i do believe that saddam deserved to die. i do believe it is justice that he be executed. but just because it is just..and is deserved..doesnt mean its smart.

saddam will now be a martyr to millions. there are saddam t shirts being printed right now. but more importantly, saddam was tried for violating the human rights of others. so to punish him..we are killing him. i think the best way to punish a terrible lack of respect for life..is to show that our society DOES respect life.

even though saddam deserves hanging..and it is justice..i think it would have sent a powerful message if we told him "we are not going to kill you..we are going to let you rot in prison. because unlike you, we value human life, even of scum like you".

its just like zacharias moussaoiu. he wanted to kill thousands...but we are better then him..and spared his life. maybe he deserved death...but thats not the point. we showed him, and islamic extremists, that we value life, even of scumbags, but they value only death.
Click to expand...

The problem with a jail sentence in Iraq is the question of exactly how long it would be before Shiite or Sunnis broke into the jail (for different reasons) and removed him - and whether that would be before Iraq falls into an anarchic state and he just escaped. Do you, by wild chance, understand that the only thing most militants understand by restraint is that they are free to do whatever they want and as example: Ghandi didn't win because he was pacifist. He won because he was pacifist against England. It does make a difference.
 
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