Should Saddam Receive the Death Penalty?

(submitted as an op-ed)



I woke up this morning to grim news on the radio, that Saddam Hussein and two of his cohorts had been sentenced to death by hanging for his crimes against humanity. Iraqi officials were bracing themselves for anticipated riots following this pronouncement.



As a human rights worker, I was in Baghdad the day Saddam was captured. I remember sitting in our neighbor’s den watching the news with them. The family, who was Christian, seemed to have a flat affect. Their housekeeper, a Sunni woman, cried and touched his face on the screen. “They will hurt him,” she wept. “They will not let him live.”



As the news continued, I had to wonder at the wisdom of sentencing this man to die. It’s true, Shi’a and Kurdish Iraqis are rejoicing in the streets. However, Amnesty International said the tribunal had missed an opportunity to establish the rule of law in Iraq, and to ensure "truth and accountability for the massive human rights violations perpetrated by Saddam Hussein's rule."



Shall we kill this man? Let’s look at some of the reasons for opposing the death penalty, particularly in this case: As with Osama bin Laden, we have heard for years now that killing him will only make him a martyr. Riots are likely to lead to a far greater loss of life, in a country that has had far too many deaths already. The ‘deterrence factor,’ often cited in get-tough legislation, is unlikely to prove effective in a country where thousands of citizens pay the death penalty for walking out their front doors--if they even get that far.



Is this execution simply deserved? Probably. Saddam tortured and killed thousands of people, his own people and others. He used terrible weapons. These were indisputably crimes against humanity. But then, who else deserves to share this fate?



After all, our hands are bloody also. We supported Saddam’s rise to power; we gave him intelligence and the weaponry in order to carry out his crimes in Halabja and elsewhere. We promised to support the Shi’a if they revolted against him, then we looked the other way as he slaughtered them following the first Gulf War.



Meanwhile, I know another man who had over 3,000 of his own people killed; and gave the orders to kill tens of thousands more. A man who became an apologist for torture; who lied to his country and instilled a climate of repressed freedoms and constant terror. Who came to power through dubious elections processes. He has several henchmen behind him who helped to engineer this treason and tyranny. Who used massively destructive weapons against civilians time and time again. All while serving as a head of state—our own United States.



Should he be sentenced to death also? Shall he be tried for crimes against humanity?



I believe George W. Bush has plenty to answer for, along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove, and the rest of his cohorts who took us into this dirty war. Still, as a human rights worker and a Christian, I simply cannot support the death penalty against anyone, no matter who it is.



When this man and his followers die, so too die the answers that thousands of Iraqi families seek about the fate of their loved ones. And, as often happens in state-sponsored terror, by the time you punish everyone who took part in these crimes, you will have effectively created yet another genocide. Where would we stop?



Instead, I believe the just sentence is multiple life sentences. Why not contain these men, prevent them from attaining power again, and over time seek the truth and accountability so desperately sought? Let Saddam be a living testament that these acts should never happen again, and that we should never support them again, instead of dead history too quickly forgotten.