UKYP rant
human rights it is…
Happy New Year
Well, Christmas is over, the New Year has begun and we’re all still living in a generic spirit of goodwill, peace, pacifism and general pro-social leniency…
Unless you’re Saddam Hussein of course, he was executed on Saturday the 30th of December. So much for peace and goodwill, so, 30 years after one American president has him instated on Iraq’s Black-gold-laden throne, a different president has him executed, ooops sorry my mistake. “Holds a free, fair and democratic trial within the bounds of the country’s legal system.”
How very merry, happy and festive of us to schedule an execution just before the new year, if indeed there is such a thing as a good time to kill someone.
Please do not misunderstand my stance here, Saddam Hussein was a cruel, violent dictator who organised the methodical genocide of huge numbers of people, as such he should be punished to the full extent of the law. However in an age of religious fundamentalism, martyrdom and generic last-stand-grabbing I have to question the wisdom of killing the person who many hold as a reason for fighting, not counting the numerous ethical issues, personally being against the death penalty I would argue that death is not a tool of the state and once it begins to be used as such, as a punishment, how are we any better than the dictators and murders themselves?
It raises an interesting question, what exactly is the difference between ‘murder’ and ‘execution’ presumable that it’s the state that’s doing it, but that then raises the question of whether what Saddam was doing to the innocents in those villages counts as “executions” and if not, and we are to blame anyone, should it not be the people who put him in power (us and the Americans) or the ones who sold him weapons (again, us and the Americans)? An interesting trail of thought I found.
Thank you for some of those in North Wiltshire for holding this debate with me and raising some interesting points.
Stuart Dingle
DMYP for North/west Wiltshire
