The nation that hangs together hangs together

By Roger Migently - Wednesday, 16 January 2008

The glorious lynching of Saddam was not meant to be “unprofessional”, and “disgusting”.

No, no!

According to Iraq’s National Security Adviser, the noted humanitarian, Mouwaffaq al-Rubaie: “This was supposed to be a uniting event between Shia and Sunni.”

What a wonderful opportunity this human sacrifice would have been for fellowship and reconciliation between the warring sects! How tragic that it was missed!

Sociologists and anthropologists are at a loss as to why the intended outcome was not realised, unless it was the Shia officials who were present with their cell-phones. If only the mobile-phone-toting hangmen hadn’t shouted and argued with Saddam, and taken video of his plummeting and dangling body and shared it with the world on YouTube.

A Shia-Sunni love-in would have been inevitable, the civil war would have been over and the Americans and their allies could have gone home.

A free Iraq and the future of a fragile democracy would have been assured.

An Iraqi official assured the world that despite the debacle of the execution - carried out at an American camp in Baghdad called “ Camp Justice” - the execution itself had been carried out in accordance with Islamic law.

Just so.

Meanwhile the debate over the death penalty rages around the world. The American public, unmoved by public opinion in civilized countries - which sees them as among the last of the barbarians - now proudly keeps righteous company alongside the dwindling number of   nations practicing judicial murder, as Prime Minister Howard calls it:

Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Libya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Somaliland, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, Taiwan, India, Indonesia, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Pakistan, Kuwait, Iran, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Syria, Yemen, Tajikistan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Belarus, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Guatemala, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana.

And the United States.

And they are a proud member of the enlightened club of nations (mostly Islamic) which approve the execution of juveniles:

Saudi Arabia , Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, China, and the “Democratic” Republic of the Congo.

And the United States.

The US has staunchly refused to sign and ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which forbids capital punishment for juveniles. In this it stands with Somalia as the last two nations of true principle.

The US is merciful, however, and will not execute the insane. Instead they administer   anti-psychotic drugs to ensure that the person is sane before administering additional, lethal drugs, which kill them.

While the United States has a proud record, executing 60 people in 2005, of which 19 were killed in Texas, and 53 people in 2006, of which 24 were killed in Texas, they have a long way to go to catch up to World Execution League Champions, China, in the number of annual executions. In China execution is a huge and lucrative industry, providing fresh organs to western transplant patients at a bargain price. Western human rights monitors believe the Chinese kill about 15,000 a year, more than the rest of the world’s government-sponsored murders combined.

China is leading the way in efficiency, also, by equipping its courts with mobile execution vans as it shifts away from the communist system’s traditional bullet in the back of the head, towards the more “civilised” lethal injection. China expects that this will improve its international image and show it as a more modern and civilised society.

The United States could also learn a lot about commerce and cost recovery from China where families who want to reclaim the body of their dead relatives killed by a bullet to the head are charged for the bullet. It makes sense, doesn’t it? A triumph of “user pays”!

But let it not be said that there is no debate in the USA about the death penalty.

For example, in the measured, carefully considered words of one American citizen, chiding another who is opposed to the death penalty:

Listen sperm breath: take your withered prick, renew your Viagra prescription and go f**k that six-year-old boy you’ve had the glow for. You get your facts the same place you get your man-love: from your wart-ridden syphilitic bung hole.

Nevertheless, there seems to be growing legislative opposition in the US to such opinions, despite their obvious literary qualities:

A legislative commission recommended on Tuesday that New Jersey become the first state to abolish the death penalty since states began reinstating their capital punishment laws 35 years ago. Its report found “no compelling evidence” that capital punishment serves a legitimate purpose, and increasing evidence that it “is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency”.

The report [came] amid growing unease among politicians and the public about capital punishment.

Will this be “cut and run” from the death penalty, or “a phased withdrawal”?

UPDATE: Al Jazeera   has claimed that Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army replaced all the security officials responsible for executing Saddam. Sunni pro-Baathist website Iraqi Rabita   has claimed that one of the masked men who put the noose around Saddam’s neck was in fact Muqtada al Sadr and this is why there were chants of “Muqtada! Muqtada!”

First published at Values Australia on January 4, 2007.

Roger Migently (Sir) was born - miraculously fully-grown - in September 2006 into a world in a frenzy of shameless political hijacking of "Australian values" by politicians who, at the same time, were trashing the real values like decency, generosity and compassion. Knowing he must stand up and do something Sir Roger sat down, created Values Australia - the website of the Department of Mateship and Fair Dinkum Australian Values - and blogged, sometimes with ridicule, sometimes seriously, but always truthfully (as he saw it). He has survived government legal threats and enjoyed the encouragement of many people he respects and admires. He frequently claims full credit for the defeat of the Howard government.

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