Saddam gets a 'suspended' sentence:)

[Frenchy Faith]

To quote a wise old man :

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.

That's pretty much my view on the topic. :silly:

 

[The Arcane]

Thing is though, Frenchy, when up against pure evil even Gandalf was willing to kill for the greater good. Nobody should be happy to take another life but sometimes there exist people that go beyond the normal good/bad ratio to a place of pure evil and no good can come of letting them continue to waste good air. In my opinion, Saddam went to that place a very long time ago.

 

[eponinethen]

Thing is though, Frenchy, when up against pure evil even Gandalf was willing to kill for the greater good. Nobody should be happy to take another life but sometimes there exist people that go beyond the normal good/bad ratio to a place of pure evil and no good can come of letting them continue to waste good air. In my opinion, Saddam went to that place a very long time ago.

Your opinion, yes. I don't believe in such a thing as "pure evil" (or "evil" for that matter) when it comes to human beings. So the question is as always who gets to decide what and who is "pure evil", and how you can possibly know..

(It's just not that simple, and killing people.. never the answer.)

 

[nerd4hire]

I have absolutely no issue with Saddam Hussein being forced to spend the rest of his life in Prison with a small hatch for food and water and a TV/Video combo with Southpark the Movie on constant repeat.

Yeah, and once a month, or so bring him out, dress him in a pink bunny suit, and make him pick up litter on the streets of Baghdad.

I don't know if it would do any good, or not, but it would be funny, and really that's all the guys good for now - a few laughs.

 

[The Arcane]

Your opinion, yes. I don't believe in such a thing as "pure evil" (or "evil" for that matter) when it comes to human beings. So the question is as always who gets to decide what and who is "pure evil", and how you can possibly know..

(It's just not that simple, and killing people.. never the answer.)

Well, that probably is why our opinions on the death penalty differ so extremely, Epo. See, I absolutely believe in evil, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's all around us and to deny it's existence will only allow it to thrive.

I allow an individual's own actions to determine whether or not they may be truly evil and frankly I can't think of many current examples of supposed humanity that would better personify "evil" than Saddam. People like him are a cancer to the rest of humanity and you can't ignore a cancer. You have to cut it out and hope that the damage it has already done is not fatal.

Honestly, I envy the fact that you look at the world the way you do, Epo, and I hope for your sake that you can keep that viewpoint. I'm afraid that I left that kind of optimism behind many years ago.

 

[eponinethen]

Well, that probably is why our opinions on the death penalty differ so extremely, Epo. See, I absolutely believe in evil, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It's all around us and to deny it's existence will only allow it to thrive.

I allow an individual's own actions to determine whether or not they may be truly evil and frankly I can't think of many current examples of supposed humanity that would better personify "evil" than Saddam. People like him are a cancer to the rest of humanity and you can't ignore a cancer. You have to cut it out and hope that the damage it has already done is not fatal.

Honestly, I envy the fact that you look at the world the way you do, Epo, and I hope for your sake that you can keep that viewpoint. I'm afraid that I left that kind of optimism behind many years ago.

I'm not naive, and I thunk we use the term "evil" differently. To me, saying someone is evil, is taking away their humanity, and basically saying that they're evil and have always been and can't ever change. By doing this, you almost give them an excuse "“ "he's doing this because he's evil" "“ making things a hell of a lot less complicated than they in reality are. As I see it, people do terrible things, that makes them dangerous, which means they shouldn't be around other people 'cause they could hurt us/society. That's logic to me. But saying that they are evil is to me like saying they don't have a soul, they can't really be blamed for their actions, they're not really human beings. If they're evil it's ok to kill them, but there's no reason to even give an "evil" person another chance, because they are essensially evil and will never be anything but evil.
(I realise you have another view on this word. Or I hope you do. But I just wanted to explain why I can't believe in it.)

(Oh and I'm not saying Saddam should be given another but chance.)

 

[The Arcane]

I'm not naive, and I thunk we use the term "evil" differently. To me, saying someone is evil, is taking away their humanity, and basically saying that they're evil and have always been and can't ever change. By doing this, you almost give them an excuse "“ "he's doing this because he's evil" "“ making things a hell of a lot less complicated than they in reality are. As I see it, people do terrible things, that makes them dangerous, which means they shouldn't be around other people 'cause they could hurt us/society. That's logic to me. But saying that they are evil is to me like saying they don't have a soul, they can't really be blamed for their actions, they're not really human beings. If they're evil it's ok to kill them, but there's no reason to even give an "evil" person another chance, because they are essensially evil and will never be anything but evil.
(I realise you have another view on this word. Or I hope you do. But I just wanted to explain why I can't believe in it.)

(Oh and I'm not saying Saddam should be given another but chance.)

Yeah, definately a different take on the whole good/evil thing. For me, if I'm calling somebody evil then the last thing I am doing is calling them soulless. In fact, quite the opposite. We are all born with the potential for extreme good and extreme evil. Society, family, friends, how we view the world, shapes us into the people we become.

Those that I would describe as evil are the ones that choose to reject their potential to do the right thing. There is always the option to do what is right, even if it is the final choice that will cost you your own life over causing the death of others. To go back to Saddam, he was born with exactly the same potential as the rest of us. His life lead him down a certain path and to certain places but ultimately he has chosen to be the person he has become and has chosen to destroy the lives of thousands of innocent people. Now, if he was born without a soul then you might be able to excuse his actions as a product of his being but he has no such excuse.

The most evil beings are the ones that make the choice to commit evil acts even when they understand the concept of good and can make the choice to do it. Saddam is such a person and I defy anyone to tell me that he is capable of being redeemed or feeling sorrow for what he has done.

The death penalty is not something that should be carried out lightly or something that I particularly want to see happen but when discussing a "person" such as Saddam then I honestly feel that it is necessary and just. There is no punishment that could balance the evil he has done or that would make him feel guilt for his actions. Therefore all that is left is to remove him altogether.

 

[teentitan]

Well Epo and Arcane you have had a very interesting discussion about evil.
I want to tell you both I saw upclose and first hand what Saddam did to the Kuwati women, children, elderly and the pregnant.
I had to sit thru the lectures about how he would torture, disembowling, shoot, electrocute, hang, poision, gas and starve to death Hundreds of Thousands Iraqi citizens because he could.
I know how the man came to become president and how he foiled all the attempts to assassinate him. He arrested his own son inlaw because he was suspicious of him. His daughter begged her father to let her husband go. He did, he delivered her husbands head to her so she could bury him.
This man's soul, humanity, thoughts, actions, purpose and quest in life all revolved around evil. He had many chances at redemption but he swatted it away like you would swat away a fly that was pestering you.
So yes there is evil in this world and one of the names it goes by is Saddam Hussein. And I will be relieved when that name no longer draws a breath of air on this earth.

 

[goldenboy]

That's the kind of thing I wonder about Titan. How do the despots avoid assassination? It's amazing...

Just to talk myself through this...I don't see that any kind of belief per se is required to make use of the word "evil". All you need is to do is operate within an agreed upon moral system. You could just look at morality as a way to organize, sustain human societies if you want.

I do get that labeling a person "evil" can theoretically dehumanize. Fine. But acts, at least, could be labeled evil. Removing the word evil from one's vocabulary actually tends to dehumanize, diminish human beings, seems to me. I feel like without it, the recognition of a certain personal responsibility, autonomy is missing. Evil is a deliberate, selfish, harmful human act. "Bad" is like the negative consequences of evil. There are degrees of course, so evil can sound incredibly harsh for certain acts.

Saddam is so appalling because he's human...I guess maybe he's a psychopath? Can psychopaths ever be "rehabilitated"? They're not actually clinically insane apparently. They're aware of a society's morality. Just incredibly anti-social, selfish....

 

[nerd4hire]

Going slightly OT for a a sec. On the psychopath/sociopath thing, GB is correct. Depending on who you listen to, both terms mean pretty much the same thing, and even when there is a differentation in the terms, psychopathy would be the more correct in this case judging what GB appears to be referring to.

 

[eponinethen]

Arcane I'm not gonna answer your post, simply because we obviously look at this in very different ways, but I do understand what you're saying, I just can't see it like that.. Interesting to read your thoughts though, thanks 🙂

Saddam is so appalling because he’s human...I guess maybe he's a psychopath? Can psychopaths ever be "rehabilitated"? They’re not actually clinically insane apparently. They’re aware of a society’s morality. Just incredibly anti-social, selfish....

This I believe in. I don't believe in concepts such as "evil" or "good" (and definitely not "redeem", unless you mean that you are able to feel better about the things you regret doing, after having done things you feel better about doing). To someone or something can never be good or evil, again, that is to me making things way to simple. Obviously I think Saddam has made a lot of things I so wish he hadn't, terrible things, hurt (killed) many many people etc. Which is never "right". But by saying that someone is evil, I feel like you're not looking at the real problem, which is why someone would do these things. Maybe he's a psychopath, then he's sick and we can't really blame him for what he's doing. Maybe you can "blame" how he grew up, what he's been trough, what he's been taught, I have no idea. But the point is that there are people out there who actually think like this man, who agree with this man, are they evil too? Or just a little bit so? I don't know, and I don't where you'd draw the line and I don't know what the real problem is. But I just don't see how the solution can be deciding that someone is evil and that they don't deserve to live..

(EDIT: I shouldn't rant when my head is this messy.. but I do have a point somewhere in all of that..)

 

[Jill_Valentine]

Well Epo and Arcane you have had a very interesting discussion about evil.
I want to tell you both I saw upclose and first hand what Saddam did to the Kuwati women, children, elderly and the pregnant.
I had to sit thru the lectures about how he would torture, disembowling, shoot, electrocute, hang, poision, gas and starve to death Hundreds of Thousands Iraqi citizens because he could.
I know how the man came to become president and how he foiled all the attempts to assassinate him. He arrested his own son inlaw because he was suspicious of him. His daughter begged her father to let her husband go. He did, he delivered her husbands head to her so she could bury him.
This man's soul, humanity, thoughts, actions, purpose and quest in life all revolved around evil. He had many chances at redemption but he swatted it away like you would swat away a fly that was pestering you.
So yes there is evil in this world and one of the names it goes by is Saddam Hussein. And I will be relieved when that name no longer draws a breath of air on this earth.

What he's done is almost unfeasibly awful, but it won't be undone when he's dead. Saddam has been removed from power, he's no longer a threat. No dictator's going to learn his lesson when he's killed, so it's not a deterrent. All that's left is revenge - we want Saddam dead because we hate him. Revenge isn't a good enough reason, and I don't think it's a wise principle to lay down for the justice system of the new Iraq.


It's correct that there's any number of martyrs available to somebody looking to make propaganda out of such things, but why make their job so easy? The men who attacked America on 9/11 didn't do so in the name of Saddam Hussein. He's never been popular with religious fundamentalists due to his fairly secular politics - he abolished Sharia law in Iraq and gave women relative freedoms - which is why the US used to support him, but make a martyr out of him and that could change. A dead man can stand for anything.

 

[teentitan]

What he's done is almost unfeasibly awful, but it won't be undone when he's dead. Saddam has been removed from power, he's no longer a threat. No dictator's going to learn his lesson when he's killed, so it's not a deterrent. All that's left is revenge - we want Saddam dead because we hate him. Revenge isn't a good enough reason, and I don't think it's a wise principle to lay down for the justice system of the new Iraq.


It's correct that there's any number of martyrs available to somebody looking to make propaganda out of such things, but why make their job so easy? The men who attacked America on 9/11 didn't do so in the name of Saddam Hussein. He's never been popular with religious fundamentalists due to his fairly secular politics - he abolished Sharia law in Iraq and gave women relative freedoms - which is why the US used to support him, but make a martyr out of him and that could change. A dead man can stand for anything.

What we want is irrelevant. He is being tried by a judge in Iraq and the penalty in Iraq for what Hussein did is death by hanging. We need to respect that law because this country is now in it's infancy as a democratic society. Maybe their views on capital punishment will change. But until then that country has to be allowed to grow (just like we did in North America and parts of Europe) and do what they think together as a society what is right and acceptable for their democratically free country.
I agree with you though that no dictator will learn in his death. But if you let him live will it really be a detterent to other dictators to change their ways?
Look at Khadafi in Libya he changed his ways and stopped being a dictator. Has that dettered any other dictators to change their ways? The leaders of North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah etc are still bent on destruction and killing all those who do not believe in their beliefs.
Wether he is in jail for the rest of his life or hung Hussein will be a martyr to those who believe in his beliefs. So again the citizens in this new democratic country have to learn, if they wish, to live their life as a person with freedom of choice of what they believe in, not what a dictator tells them to believe in.
I have a question for you... if we impose our beliefs on Iraq not to hang Hussein are we then not acting like a dictator? Afterall wouldn't Iraqis think we are trading one dictator for another that is telling us what to believe in?
No one told us (as we grew as a society with a conscious) what to do. We debated and learned over what 200 to 400 years? I say let them learn on their own and we should not give them the Readers Digest version of how a democratic society should work.

 

[The Arcane]

Epo, that's fair enough. I think you know me well enough by now to realise I never post anything with the intent of trying to change other people's minds. If I do get them to rethink then that is fine but ultimately your view is as valid as mine. 😉

What he's done is almost unfeasibly awful, but it won't be undone when he's dead. Saddam has been removed from power, he's no longer a threat. No dictator's going to learn his lesson when he's killed, so it's not a deterrent. All that's left is revenge - we want Saddam dead because we hate him. Revenge isn't a good enough reason, and I don't think it's a wise principle to lay down for the justice system of the new Iraq.

Yeah, true enough, if this was really about revenge. The thing is that I don't think it is, at least not for the most part. It's about principle and setting boundaries. Above all it's about showing willing to go as far as it takes to ensure a free world for all those who want to live peacefully in it.

Punishment, of any form and for any crime, could be said to be about revenge but really it's about trying to get people to follow society's rules. You could say that a shoplifter goes to prison because the shop owner wanted revenge on him, but that isn't strictly true. He goes to prison because he broke a law and there exists a system to punish him for that which was created to try deter the crime from happening again.

Now take that to the level of crimes that Saddam has commited. How do you punish that kind of crime with the hope of preventing it all from happening again? Whether it helps or not is beside the point. The inent has to be shown. The punishment should be on some level with the crime commited and frankly I'm not certain that throwing the guy into prison where he will be fed, clothed and kept for his entire life actually would deter any future wannabe dictator from trying this all again.

There has to be some balance between the level of evil that a man has commited and what he has to do to pay for that evil and short of a life of torture and pain then I don't see any other option than to have him face the end of his own existence. Believe me, the way that Saddam will die is going to be far kinder and far less painful than anything he was happy to put so many thousand of his own people through when it suited his purpose.

 

[freakydorky]

The hanged him last night. 9 o'clock central time. Here comes WWIII.

 

[teentitan]

The hanged him last night. 9 o'clock central time. Here comes WWIII.

WWIII? No don't think so but the civil war in Iraq is most likely to ramp up.

 

[freakydorky]

I think there will be retaliation. The USA is held responsible for the hanging of Saddam. There are still loyal supporters of him out there who will be wanting revenge. We shoulda just left him in his hole.

 

[nerd4hire]

It just isn't that big a deal. Sadam hasn't mattered since they dug him out of that wormhole he was hiding in, and locked him up. CNN has been showing the James Brown funeral all day. That shows how much of a priority they think Sadam's exectution is.

 

[Schillaci]

Nobody cares about sadam. The crap in Iraq is about different groups all fighting for power.

As for ww3? Against the ragheads? The west is the best, get here and we'll do the rest.

Be cool if Islam and Christianity picked up its pluggers and turned the world into a big bath.

Us Atheists would be on the sidelines figuring out the toxin that eliminates both groups. You know, it targets the idiot gene. The only dilemma would be who we take out first.

 

[Jill_Valentine]

Nobody cares about sadam. The crap in Iraq is about different groups all fighting for power.

As for ww3? Against the ragheads? The west is the best, get here and we'll do the rest.

Be cool if Islam and Christianity picked up its pluggers and turned the world into a big bath.

Us Atheists would be on the sidelines figuring out the toxin that eliminates both groups. You know, it targets the idiot gene. The only dilemma would be who we take out first.

Get off my side, you're making it look stupid.