quote:Let us punish as we did Robert-François Damiens, and then let us burn Voltaire as we march gloriously backwards to the era when justice was not contaminated by the Enlightenment. Justice for all, religious courts, tribal courts, trial by combat, trial by ordeal! Down with Liberalism, down with Humanism, down with Mercy, down with Justice, long live Vengence! Might Makes Right!
HOW TO STRAWMAN WITH FLOURISH, BY PELEGIUS
Step one: find people who don't agree with you on the use of the death penalty
Step two: acccuse them of essentially being morally antithetical to civilization itself, desiring only to march lockstep into dystopian barbarism!
posted
I also think that a lot of people, such as myself, who usually are very divided about the death penalty have no such qualms when regarding cases like Saddam's.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: Added to the fact that the trial was itself a travesty (according to precedent, he should have been tried by a court consisting of British, American and Kuwaiti judges, not an Iraqi court which has no right to sentence for crimes comited across international borders. Nobody, aparently ever looked at the Nuremburg trials, they never do.)
I'm not so sure that an international court would have made the trials appear much more legitimate. Including more coalition powers would make it look like a victor's trial, and including Kurdish representatives would make it a victim's trial. Including Iran - there's a curious idea (I'm not suggesting it's preferable, of course). And remember that Tokyo and Nuremberg were also considered travesties of justice by many at the time. For example, Unit 731, which conducted biological warfare experiments on Chinese civilians, escaped punishment by trading the results of their research with the Americans.
I'm not saying that Tokyo and Nuremberg were a joke on justice, that Goering should not have been hanged, or that American occupation policy was oppressive (it was not - in fact it was positively humane). Only that it is very difficult for a victorious power to set up a court with any appearance of legitimacy, especially after the country has been cleared (to the best of their ability) of supporters of the old regime - the regime which is on trial. Also, Tokyo and Nuremberg were trials without precedent. The fact that they are the only precedents available doesn't necessarily make them good ones to follow.
I'm hardly surprised that 73% of Americans believed the sentence was justified, after almost 3000 US troops have been killed toppling Hussein's regime. Who knows how many Iraqis and Kurds he is responsible for killing?
quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: No court has the legitimate power to issue a death sentence, this court, which is in violation of the only precedents avaidable, namely the Nuremburg and Tokyo courts and the more recent ICTY and ICTR.
It seems that the majority of America doesn't agree with you on the matter of capital punishment, at least when it concerns PoW's (a distinction for another thread, perhaps) responsible for crimes against humanity.
quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I also think that a lot of people, such as myself, who usually are very divided about the death penalty have no such qualms when regarding cases like Saddam's.
posted
"The Roman Catholic Church, like most Jewish thinkers but unlike Buddhism, does not teach that Capital punishment is theoreticly always wrong. It does however, teach that the conditions in which it is acceptable are unlikely ever to occur.."
"Pel, you are incorrect in your summation of Jewish thought."
But less so than your own implication, rivka. Due to the highly restrictive conditions under which Jewish Law allows the death penalty to be applied, even though Israel has carried the death penalty since its founding -- and plenty of homicides which fit the criteria of murder -- Israel has applied the death penalty once: on May31st1962 against AdolfEichmann, architect of the FinalSolution/Holocaust/Shoah.
Admittedly, Israeli military/intelligence services have carried out politically-ordered assassinations against military foes when extraction&rendition into the jurisdiction of Israeli courts was deemed impractical. However, those assassinations were&are undertaken on contemporaneous threats: ie military equivalents of police shooting a known-to-be-homicidal armed thug who refuses to surrender during the commission of a heinous crime. As far as can be determined, assassinations aren't used for revenge or as punishment for past crimes.
posted
I could do a point-by-point rebuttal. But it's not worth my time.
Let me simply say that Jewish Law applies only to Jews; that the policies of the State of Israel have little to do with Jewish Law; and that there is no consensus regarding the death penalty in secular law in Jewish thought. There are strong points of view on both sides, though.
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posted
And the fact that Israel's covert operations against terrorists were not used for revenge or punishment is very much open to debate.
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posted
Which is why I used "As far as can be determined" as the qualifier. But it is known that many who have engaged in actions resulting in crimes against humanity (eg WWII war criminals) or murder (eg planners and enablers of suicide bombings, missile attacks, skyjackings, etc) have been allowed to keep their freedom until they could safely be brought into Israeli custody. Assassinations seem to be reserved for those thought to be actively participating in on-going suicide-bombing/etc campaigns.
posted
Without getting into all the details of the thread, I agree with Pel's statement that killing Sadaam isn't justice, it's vengeance.
While Sadaam did unthinkably monstrous things, he is still a human, and humans have the capacity to change. His death will not bring about any good in the world. It will solve nothing and only cause more hate. Sadaam would not be a danger to anyone any more. People talk about the 'cost' of keeping people alive in prison--but I say it's worth it for the sake of human decency.
Someday, I imagine we'll look back at capital punishment as a barbaric act committed by people who didn't know any better.
posted
Justice, at least as it's normally characterized, can contain a number of reasons for certain punishments, such as rehabilitation, retribution, deterrence, and protecting the safety of the community. I think that killing Saddam can be argued to be justice based on the last three: that he has done wrong, and must be punished for it (the scales of justice need to be balanced), that killing him may give pause to other would-be-dictators, and that the Iraqi people may never feel safe - and may in fact not be safe - until he is dead.
You can argue that we should base our justice system purely on rehabilitation, or that the calculation of costs and benefits (of safety, deterrence, and regular monetary concerns) point towards keeping him alive. But simply saying that we cannot call capital punishment justice is wrong. Retribution, as carried out by the state (not individuals - that's vengeance), can be catagorized as justice.
Posts: 2409 | Registered: Sep 2003
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posted
Or one could look at the numbers of Iraqi civilians killed in sectarian and political violence since the overthrow of Saddam, and come to the conclusion that Dubya should hang with Saddam. As well as Dubya's daddy for allowing Saddam's forces to cross US military lines to suppress the Shi'ite rebellion that GeorgeHerbertWalkerBush himself encouraged. And dig up Reagan to hang alongside for aiding Saddam in gassing the Kurds.
quote:Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends. *
When retribution even by the state is all too randomly applied, people should leave any irrevocably final justice to Allah.
* With thanks to Dagonee for finding the more correct version of Tolkein's words.
If you read some of the Middle Eastern news sources, that is PRECISELY what people are saying. Bush should be executed for what has happened to the civilians, Olmert should be executed for what happened to the Lebanese. The Shiites are happy, the Kurds are happy, (mostly, for both), but the Sunnis by and large are pissy in most places, and some of those places are where our current relations are still somewhat friendly, like Jordan.
With Saddam, I'm of mixed opinion. Personally I like the prescription given by Josh in the episode of the West Wing titled "Isaac and Ishmael." He said that terrorists should be locked in a room and forced to watch home movies of the people they killed, and every night before they go to bed, they got punched once in the mouth, every night by a different volunteer, and there'd be a long list.
I suppose that counts as torture, and I guess most Kurds don't have video cameras anyway, so it wouldn't matter, but I like the sentiment of it. Force Saddam to live every day staring at the face of people he had killed.
But really, I have trouble coming up with sympathy for someone who ordered chemical weapons used on women and children. And either way, who are any of us to impose our legal system on another FREE nation? If the people of Iraq choose to live with the death penalty, as they have done since the days when Ur was the hot spot to be, that is their decision. Saddam was tried by Iraqis, as an Iraqi, for crimes against Iraqis, and punished by Iraqi law, punished by a system he never gave the benefit of to any whom he had summarily executed.
And for Europe, I see even less real reason to complain. The majority of them sat it out, but now they want to jump in after the fact and try to impart judgement? Sorry, late to the game, and you don't get to play.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
A large minority of Americans failed to support going to war in Iraq. Should they too receive a "you don't get to play" when voicing their opinions? How about when voting?
While some folks self-induce sympathy for the condemned in order convince themselves to oppose the death penalty, many-and-possibly-most of us have no such sympathy. Opposition to the death penalty is purely pragmatic: There is no homicide more cold-blooded than execution-by-state. "The stronger (in this case the state) can kill the weaker (in this case the individual) with impugnity." gives precedent to those who have private motives for murder, and for the state to include ever increasing numbers of lesser crimes as capital crimes. If the state murders an innocent man -- and execution of an innocent is always murder, irrespective of 'i's dotted and the 't's crossed -- is there any practical way to execute the state to balance the scales? The state -- especially a FirstWorld nation -- always has the option of inescapeable imprisonment to prevent repetition of the crime by those found guilty. We aren't talking about a handul of people trapped on an island with a homicidal maniac waiting for them to fall asleep before renewing his killings. People are fallible, and mobs of people are even more so. Relying on trained manipulators (judges and lawyers) to move a mob into rendering infallible verdicts is absurd. Since verdicts cannot be infallible and death is irrevocable, judgments should not include death as an option.
quote: In adition, the Roman Catholic Church is probably the single biggest anti-Captial Punishment lobby in the world. Most other mainline denominations, such as Episcopalians and Methodists, are also oposed to capital punishment. l So really, all three.
You forgot to mention the Southern Baptists, which I believe is the largest denomination in the US.
I also don't think Saddam's trial would've passed the laugh test in the US or British systems.
I am surprised on a daily basis to learn that Saddam hasn't simply been torn apart by an angry mob.
My sense of justice is that the man's life is forfeit and whatever bad happens to him now is of his own making, practically inevitable, and certainly easily foreseeable.
Having said that, however, I still do not condone the death penalty in this or any other case. I suspect that he is a wealth of information for Americans and we could learn a great deal about the consequences of our past foreign policies from this man. I suspect that society could get a lot of benefit from studying him from a psychological point of view.
The death penalty is a waste of an opportunity, imo.
It is something that should give us pause from a moral point of view, even in the case of a murdering, abusive power-mad individual like Saddam.
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Due to the highly restrictive conditions under which Jewish Law allows the death penalty to be applied, even though Israel has carried the death penalty since its founding -- and plenty of homicides which fit the criteria of murder -- Israel has applied the death penalty once: on May31st1962 against AdolfEichmann, architect of the FinalSolution/Holocaust/Shoah.
Heh. This is funny. Where did you get the idea that the restrictions on capital punishment in Jewish law have any influence whatsoever on what the State of Israel does and does not do?
Those laws pertain to the Sanhedrin, which does not currently exist.
So Rivka's comment about Pelegius' ignorance was absolutely spot on.
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posted
Opposing viewpoints on capital punishment in Jewish thought -- all from the same blog. (These are all from when Tookie Williams was executed last year.)
I happen not to entirely agree with any of those viewpoints, and have argued (both the specific case and the more general issue) the matter with one of the bloggers in person. Repeatedly.
But it should be clear that there are some very different opinions -- and this isn't the entire spectrum of Jewish thought, or even close to it.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote: Opposition to the death penalty is purely pragmatic: There is no homicide more cold-blooded than execution-by-state. "The stronger (in this case the state) can kill the weaker (in this case the individual) with impugnity." gives precedent to those who have private motives for murder, and for the state to include ever increasing numbers of lesser crimes as capital crimes. If the state murders an innocent man -- and execution of an innocent is always murder, irrespective of 'i's dotted and the 't's crossed -- is there any practical way to execute the state to balance the scales? The state -- especially a FirstWorld nation -- always has the option of inescapeable imprisonment to prevent repetition of the crime by those found guilty. We aren't talking about a handul of people trapped on an island with a homicidal maniac waiting for them to fall asleep before renewing his killings. People are fallible, and mobs of people are even more so. Relying on trained manipulators (judges and lawyers) to move a mob into rendering infallible verdicts is absurd. Since verdicts cannot be infallible and death is irrevocable, judgments should not include death as an option.
This is coming from a guy who hardly ever agrees with you aspectre, but in this case I agree with a lot of what you're saying there.
Posts: 1412 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by aspectre: A large minority of Americans failed to support going to war in Iraq. Should they too receive a "you don't get to play" when voicing their opinions? How about when voting?
Not the same thing, for several reasons.
First of all, while they might have withheld aural support, they are still paying for the war whether they like it or not. And whether they like it or not, the actions of America effect how the world perceives Americans, regardless of the personal feelings of the individual, they'll still be painted with the "blood thirsty Americans" monniker by many around the world.
How they vote is how they express their will for or against the war.
With few exceptions, Europe offered no support for the war, and not only did they not offer support, they criticized the effort from the start, and haven't shut up since. They can talk all they want, it's their right to talk. But at the end of the day, when we totally ignore them, I can't imagine they'll really be surprised as to why.
Decisions are made by those who show up. They decided not to.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
Saddam was just a thug with unlimited power, nothing to learn there, seen it a thousand times. Let him die and flush him like the moral mouse he is.
Pay Per View on the hanging is a good idea, the proceeds could go to the Families of his victims.
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quote: Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.
When retribution even by the state is all too randomly applied, people should leave any irrevocably final justice to Allah.
Yes. Tolkein was much wiser than many give him credit for
We consider oursleves too wise and too mighty if we believe it our right to weigh human life on a scale and find it wanting, and then proceed to end life.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Maybe someone should send an Arabic translation of Fellowship to Baghdad.
Otherwise, this is a moot point, especially when talking about American involvement. Iraqi crime, Iraqi court, Iraqi citizens, Iraqi justice.
Who are we to dictate morality to them Pelegius? We who went to Iraq and tore up their nation out of self interest.
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posted
"Who are we to dictate morality to them Pelegius?"
We speak as one risen ape to another, pointing out what new light we have found. I wonder if Plato realized that it is better to see shadows of truth than to stare at a blank cave wall. Probably, although I dislike Plato so much that I would rather think him less astute.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: "Who are we to dictate morality to them Pelegius?"
We speak as one risen ape to another, pointing out what new light we have found. I wonder if Plato realized that it is better to see shadows of truth than to stare at a blank cave wall. Probably, although I dislike Plato so much that I would rather think him less astute.
Do you really think we've found any light? I mean, really? What makes us better? As Lyr said, we willfully went into their country and destroyed things. And we are the better ones why?
We're the ones who were stupid enough not to bat an eye at "Afghanistan, Afghanistan......IRAQ!" It's like a sick, twisted duck-duck-goose.
quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: "Who are we to dictate morality to them Pelegius?"
We speak as one risen ape to another, pointing out what new light we have found. I wonder if Plato realized that it is better to see shadows of truth than to stare at a blank cave wall. Probably, although I dislike Plato so much that I would rather think him less astute.
We didn't come from apes, apes and humans came from a common ancestor. So I guess you could say apes are fallen humans, if you want to put it that way.
We have no moral authority over there Pelegius. Any and all authority we have is at the point of a gun. You don't invade a country, become the source of their ire, and the one who is blamed for the deaths of women and children, and then have the audacity to tell them they shouldn't kill the man who ordered the deaths of thousands of their civilians. Oh, and you ESPECIALLY don't do it when you promised to protect them and then leave them high and dry.
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posted
Admittidly, I haven't been following the court proceedings of Sadam, but I do not feel that a death centance was unwarented or a gross misscarage of justice.
quote:jus‧tice [juhs-tis] –noun 1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause. 2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice. 3. the moral principle determining just conduct. 4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment. 5. the administering of deserved punishment or reward. 6. the maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings: a court of justice. 7. judgment of persons or causes by judicial process: to administer justice in a community. 8. a judicial officer; a judge or magistrate. 9. (initial capital letter) Also called Justice Department. the Department of Justice. —Idioms 10. bring to justice, to cause to come before a court for trial or to receive punishment for one's misdeeds: The murderer was brought to justice. 11. do justice, a. to act or treat justly or fairly. b. to appreciate properly: We must see this play again to do it justice. c. to acquit in accordance with one's abilities or potentialities: He finally got a role in which he could do himself justice as an actor.
Sounds about right to me.
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