Centerblue.org

Saddam Hussein has been executed. Fantastic.

While I question the taste of photographs and videos going around showing his final moments, I fully approve of his execution. The world has to send a powerful message that it will not support, and will actively hunt down and kill, brutal dictators who mercilessly execute their own people through torture, starvation, gassing, or whatever. Death is the only thing these people understand, and it is the only thing that will serve as a deterrent.

Whether we like it or not, the penal systems of cultures throughout history have always reserved the right to mete out the worst punishment of all–death–to those members of society that they deem to be a severe detriment because of the behavior of the condemned.

When I visited Colonial Williamsburg earlier this year, I was given an overview of the colony’s penal system. Defendants accused of the worst crimes were imprisoned until the court came into session twice a year. At that time the evidence was presented and the defendants were sentenced if found guilty. At the option of the court, a first-time offender who would have been sentenced to death could instead be branded in a prominent place with a symbol indicating his crime and would then be freed, given another chance at life. Anyone who would deal with that person thereafter would see the symbol and be aware of the person’s crime. If that person committed another crime, or if a person did not receive the mercy of the court the first time, that would be it–he’d be marched right to the gallows. There were no lengthy appeals or cries for mercy. He would be taken out to the back of the courthouse and hanged. It was brutal, it was efficient, and it worked fantastically as a deterrent.

We deem ourselves a more “advanced” society now, with due process of law. That’s a good thing–we should be very damn sure of a person’s guilt before executing him. But once we get to that point, we should not be squeamish about carrying out the retribution of society against those who have hurt us the most. We simply cannot and must not tolerate crimes against humanity and each other of rape, murder, and the like….and someone who inflicts that on someone else does not deserve to live.

Saddam Hussein did not deserve to share the planet with the rest of us. If there is one good thing that has come out of the Iraq disaster, it has been putting this cur out of his misery.

Good riddance.

In a sad but unsurprising demonstration of just how little the US government administration prepared for a post-war Iraq, evidence is emerging that President Bush didn’t even know there were two sects in Islam until shortly before the invasion.

The allegation is made by Peter Galbraith, former ambassador to Croatia, in his new book, “The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End.”

Shortly before the invasion, Bush reportedly met with three Iraqi-Americans who tried to explain to him what Iraq might look like after Saddam Hussein was removed from power. During the conversation it became clear that Bush was apparently not grasping that there were two sects of Islam, Shiite and Sunni, with some drastic differences between them.

When they tried to explain the difference to him, Bush responded, “I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!”

It’s good to know we have an intellectual giant as the leader of the free world.