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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-01-02

Gotta Love the Double Standard

On the Lawful Execution of Saddam Hussein:

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott: "unacceptable"

L'Osservatore Romano (The Vatican's Daily): "making a spectacle" of the execution had turned capital punishment into "an expression of political hubris."

Italy is going to renew efforts at the U.N. to ban capital punishment.

Even Cuba called it "an illegal act", and felt it had the " . . .moral duty to express its point of view about the assassination committed by the occupying power."

Keep in mind, all of this consternation is because of the dissemination of a bootlegged videophone recording of the execution by somebody inside the execution chambers. It was neither made by the U.S. or Iraqi governments, nor sanctioned nor distributed. And, given the method, it is fairly clear that, had those governments known about it, it would probably never have gotten out.

Funny, I don't remember similar statements of outrage and moral superiority at the DELIBERATELY MADE AND DISTRIBUTED televised recordings of the gruesome beheadings of a number of American soldiers and contractors in the first two years of the war. And, all of these sources have, somehow, gone quiet at the truly despicable acts of mass murder that happen every day in Iraq.

I think we've truly lost our way as a civilization when the just execution of one truly evil man draws more international outrage than the murders of women and children just going about their daily lives.

Encouragingly, at least the new U.N. General Secretary got it right:

Saddam Hussein was responsible for committing heinous crimes and unspeakable atrocities against Iraqi people and we should never forget victims of his crime, . . .The issue of capital punishment is for each and every member state to decide."
Posted by: Michael / 1/02/2007 11:45:00 PM

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