A Capital Thing

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster" - Nietzsche.

Executions come but rarely in our civilized world and not often does it involve a Saddam Hussein hanging by his neck. So it is but fair that we excuse all the hoopla that surrounded the day. CNN went to such lengths to cover the event and I am sure almost every network worth its salt anywhere in the world would have done its bit, that it all seemed for sometime a bit like the Letourneau marriage or something. I was not too interested; but the post-execution revelations that have surfaced all over the place have me really, really disturbed. Of course you can get the lowdown on all the uproar at bbc.co.uk or cnn.com.

I have never been one for capital punishment. It just doesn't make sense to me to arrogate to oneself the right to take life when we do not have the ability to create one. The debate is not so simply dismissed though, and I understand certain positions that the pro-capital punishment people take but I just prefer to lean to my own corner. Even if it is Saddam with his malice toward Kurds and kindness to none and all the Weapons of Mass Destruction he bought to fight the Iranians. But, even if this most reviled man of our times(of those caught) needs to be put away, it surely can be done without evoking the spirit of a medieval stoning or the stake or scenes from Braveheart and The Passion. Surely, a man, however evil and against the grain of popular and reasonable morality he has been, just because he is a man, deserves some dignity when the noose is being put around his neck. Shame on you, CNN and official witnesses, I want to say, but it is shame on us too. After all, CNN shows us what we want to see: the modern broadcast medium is just a mirror held up to the world. I am sure there is still the primitive urge for revenge in all of us and an offensive bloodthirstiness and Saddam's execution was just the right purge in quaint 18th century fashion. He is not the hungry Somali kid fooling around with a gun, whom we have to gun down with a tear in our eyes; he is not the Prince of darkness, a gentleman; he is not even the Marquis of A, we have to kill for our passion d'amour. Cheers to the guy! Down to hell! And save your prayers for when you are down there! And what now of the re-engineered Sunni-Shia split? What of the new breed of self-righteous, self-justifying mullas this whole episode has created? Outraged sentiments apart, did we really need to end the guy's pathetic life so pathetically? Mercy is over-rated but often so is revenge!

But, wait, there is this other guy in the funny turban now, let us get him.