©2007 UrbisMedia
The phone-video of the last moments of Saddam Hussein seemed to provoke a surprising amount of protest, from his faithful, of course, but also from those that felt the rather crude way in which it was conducted, reflected badly on America. America needs no extra bad reflections these days—we have George Bush—but we grabbed Saddam, held him, and only turned him over in the last hours to the Iraqi government, which is our satrapy. So our hand was not far from the handle that dropped Saddam into the arms of his awaiting “72 virgins.” And not that anything that Bush-Cheney and Rumsfeld had their hands on would not be a colossal public relations screw-up.
So there was ugly old Saddam (actually he is was a rather handsome man) being taunted and cursed in his final moments. And he, remarkably, is giving it back, feisty to the end. It was sordid, not at all like the nice, clean, quiet job we do of it in Texas. But there is far more precedent for the way Saddam was treated; he wasn’t tumbrelled through the streets of Paris covered with spit, offal, and feces, then jeered and mocked, decapitated, and had his head held up to the laughing throng; he wasn’t roasted on a stake the way the Church used to do it; he didn’t have his guts unraveled, or his limbs serially broken on the wheel, or drawn and quartered, the way the country that gave us Masterpiece Theatre used to do it. Historically, Saddam got off easy. It would have been much better if the idiots who wanted to “do him” would have the prescience to figure out that, if you want an execution to look as “proper” as possible, you do not give the job to relatives of the principal’s victims. Bush, who keeps Saddam’s pistol as a war prize in his drawer, thought he could take his hands off at the last moment and not get implicated. [1]
So, am I copping a commutation plea for Saddam? Nope But I never have a good feeling about executions—I think that it’s knowing the exact moment—even for the worst bastards. It’s hard not to imagine oneself on the gallows, guillotine or gurney; to wonder what it feels like to be at the precipice of existence, and to wonder if getting there hurts. So executions are always a bit of memento mori .
OK, here’s a test. If Saddam Hussein or Radko Mladic came into my house and was going to kill my grandchildren would I shoot him or put a knife in his guts. I wouldn’t hesitate a nano-second, even if they were only intending to do no harm. OK, now switch to Hussein and Mladic having been tried and found guilty of mass murders of other people’s grandchildren. So distinction No. 1 is that you might feel differently about things if you were a victim (and yes I know that the relatives of some victims oppose capital punishment, and have even “forgiven” murderers). Since, it’s never happened to me I can’t say exactly how I would feel. But if there is incontrovertible proof of a person being a mass murderer you are not going to find me with a candle outside the prison on execution night chanting to save Saddam Hussein. Somebody wants to kill him? I’m not going to get in the way.
But I can’t get off that easy. It’s my state, my government that is doing it, putatively, and maybe, on my behalf. My hand is not on the gallows lever, but it was (or was not) on the voting machine lever (pre-touchscreen) that put people in office or created then plebiscites that gave us capital punishment.
So, you still want to know, is this a brief for Saddam? No. They could have slathered his naked body in falafel sauce and set him loose in the streets of Basra as far as I’m concerned. Which is to say, that it would have been far more “poetic” had he been found by Shiites and gotten some street-level payback. But George had to get into it, and, as is his “gift,” screw things up.
But when thinking about capital punishment Saddam, Mladic (and there are many other candidates) are the easy part. They do their murders openly, brutally, and with seeming glee. There is incontrovertible proof of their evil deeds. But most of these creeps—Pinochet most recently—die in their beds, not at the end of a rope. So let’s now bring Texas into the mix. And DNA .
The problem with the exalted American system of justice is that it sucks on a number of levels. Sentencing for one. Some poor sap who gets caught with a pocket full of pot ends up sitting in prison for fifteen years, but some embezzler who cons thousands of people out of the life savings gets 3 to 5 in a country club with time off for good behavior.
I should admit at this point that I used to be a supporter of the death penalty. It just seemed that there were crimes so heinous that their perpetrators deserved extinction. That was my rationale, just vengeance, just punishment; not anything practical, like it would act as a deterrent to capital crimes. Such intents like deterrence just don’t work; there are higher homicide rates in states that have the death penalty. [2] But there still was vengeance.
The first thing that turned me around on this issue is DNA, not mine, but the DNA of (so far) some 155 persons that were on death rows who have been exonerated by DNA evidence. [3] It seems to me that having our revenge on murderers is not worth the very good chance that we will execute an innocent person or persons, which has probably already happened way too much. It is now possible to prove , scientifically, guilt or innocence. For me, the rationalist, that trumps (well, maybe buttresses) beyond reasonable doubt , because what corrupts reasonable doubt is unreasonable prejudice. Yet, social conservatives, and religious fundamentalists have been opposing a more systematic use of DNA evidence. [4] It amuses me that religious fundamentalists, who believe in divine justice and that murderers will eventually languish in Hell, feel the need to keep DNA out of death penalty cases. It is they who should feel most assured that justice will eventually done. But then we know from the evolution issue that they have their problems with science. After all, DNA isn’t even mentioned in the Bible.
Of course, neither Saddam nor Mladic probably have any of their own DNA involved in their mass murders. Frankly, I don’t care about them as much as I care about those low-income, or high-melanin dudes who couldn’t afford their own defense attorney, but whose guilt or innocence might be verified by a lab test. Some murderers will get off, some will rot in prison for life, but that’s preferable to one innocent person going to the gallows. I always wonder what it would be like not just to be executed, but to know that you are innocent.
But as far as that ugly execution of Saddam Hussein is concerned—George Bush’s DNA was all over that one. [5]
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©2007, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 1.21.2007)
[1] I’m still wondering whether this whole sorry, bloody, Iraq thing, is the result of Little George showing Big George that he is a “real man” by going out and trashing a country to get the guy who tried to get his father.
[2] But this much I can say: were it not for my moral repugnance for murdering somebody I think the idea if being executed, by any means, would deter me. Whether it deters others is, of course, much mooted.
[3] Twelve convicts in Dallas County Texas alone have been exonerated by DNA evidence. [NPR, Day to Day, 1.18.2006]
[4] Yes, I realize that DNA evidence is not always relevant or available in capitol cases.
[5] Since I first wrote this the Iraqis have bungled another execution, this time not gauging the weight-to-drop distance and literally ripping off the head of Saddam’s cousin. When Bush was asked about the executions recently on 60 Minutes he said, with his characteristics stupid ambiguity, that he was “disappointed.”