OT... Saddam is executed. Right thing to do?

[Meef Chaloin]

im merely contesting the assumption that humanity is getting better or improving. Its easy to say that sitting in a nice warm house in front of a computer but most western countries have that comfort precisely because they have ripped off poorer countries (in one way or another). I was just trying to point out that the majority of the world's population lives in extreme poverty with no sign of improvement, while a minority (the west, which has comparatively a lot fewer people) sits on its hoard of stolen riches.

Ask people in India or China if humanity/life is getting better. Better still ask Iraqis, Kurds, Afghanis, Sudanese, Amazon tribes.

My point was aimed at the egocentric view that many have stated in this thread that their values are absolute when a much larger population on the other side of the planet hold very different ones.

[Meef Chaloin]

double post

[knotkranky]

Ok, understood. I am a bit on edge over this colossal mess. It's a bit too much for me sometimes and the Saddam execution just boiled me over. I don't want the war to affect me anymore but the way I've been doing that is to be disaffected and that only brings on a weird guilty feeling. It gets harder to do as I get older and then the positive feeling I like having at new years has been muted some. Beyond all that I do have a good year ahead of me. I suppose I can muster all that into a profound sense of great-fullness. Anyway, cheers and happy new year.

[Contra]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy7QXCpzzeM

hmm seems to be old news, there's already a movie on the internet where you see everything, one of them films it with his telephone....

the worst thing about all this is it's actually almost making me feel sorry for saddam

I've no doubt this will make a martyr out of him

WTF!

man this is getting out of hand.
i mean maybe capital punishment wasnt the answer,
but im sure if it was bush getting a trip to the gallows and publicized all over the world you wouldnt feel half as bad.

plus whut is this mess let me tell you from experience dont think anyone in the middle east gives two shits, about the US,EURO and let alone Australian nations.

food for thought.

Did Saddam deserve to die?
honestly he shouldve rotted in a prison cell til he croaked himself.

[Machinesworking]

iimprovement, while a minority (the west, which has comparatively a lot fewer people) sits on its hoard of stolen riches.

Ask people in India or China if humanity/life is getting better.

Uh? Someone just pointed out that the chinese poor are not facing starvation as a possible deathe sentence for the first time in years. I never said that things are perfect, just getting better.
I'm not an optimist, I just think that it's important to look at the whole picture rather than the minute details of the time in which you live.

[Machinesworking]

hmm seems to be old news, there's already a movie on the internet where you see everything, one of them films it with his telephone....

the worst thing about all this is it's actually almost making me feel sorry for saddam

I've no doubt this will make a martyr out of him

WTF!

man this is getting out of hand.
i mean maybe capital punishment wasnt the answer,
but im sure if it was bush getting a trip to the gallows and publicized all over the world you wouldnt feel half as bad.

plus whut is this mess let me tell you from experience dont think anyone in the middle east gives two shits, about the US,EURO and let alone Australian nations.

food for thought.

Did Saddam deserve to die?
honestly he shouldve rotted in a prison cell til he croaked himself.

I don't know about Forge, but I wouldn't want to see Bush go that way either. Simple truth to me is the state should never have the right to kill.
But hey, you're right, they don't care about our nations etc. they care that we have invaded theirs, and you simply can't deny that.

Think of it this way, what if Sweden (arguably a better democratic system than Israel, and obviously less aggressive) decided that the weapons building of Israel was a threat to 'world peace', invaded, and occupied? A bunch of protestants without half the problems of Israel decide that a predominantly jewish country needs a new government more in line with Scandinavian political ideology? What if it could be proven that ethically Sweden held a higher ground? or that current president of Israel was wildly unpopular, and he was publicly executed?
Basically, you, and any other person with jewish blood, or friends etc. would be sickened by Sweden's actions, it wouldn't matter that the former president was a dick one bit.

[Contra]

the worst thing about all this is it's actually almost making me feel sorry for saddam

I've no doubt this will make a martyr out of him

WTF!

man this is getting out of hand.
i mean maybe capital punishment wasnt the answer,
but im sure if it was bush getting a trip to the gallows and publicized all over the world you wouldnt feel half as bad.

plus whut is this mess let me tell you from experience dont think anyone in the middle east gives two shits, about the US,EURO and let alone Australian nations.

food for thought.

Did Saddam deserve to die?
honestly he shouldve rotted in a prison cell til he croaked himself.

I don't know about Forge, but I wouldn't want to see Bush go that way either. Simple truth to me is the state should never have the right to kill.
But hey, you're right, they don't care about our nations etc. they care that we have invaded theirs, and you simply can't deny that.

Think of it this way, what if Sweden (arguably a better democratic system than Israel, and obviously less aggressive) decided that the weapons building of Israel was a threat to 'world peace', invaded, and occupied? A bunch of protestants without half the problems of Israel decide that a predominantly jewish country needs a new government more in line with Scandinavian political ideology? What if it could be proven that ethically Sweden held a higher ground? or that current president of Israel was wildly unpopular, and he was publicly executed?
Basically, you, and any other person with jewish blood, or friends etc. would be sickened by Sweden's actions, it wouldn't matter that the former president was a dick one bit.

i feel exactly where your coming from, but this is quite a touchy subject, because if we sit here and say X country is evil from Y's perspective some peoople in X country will be offended although everyone in Y country thinks X country's inhabitants are all evil.

its best we just dead all this political talk and go talk about Live.
coming from a middle eastern background i can tell you from a middle eastern perspective, if i was with an arab the last thing i'd talk about is politics or religion or both, and if he was a close friend or not id expect the same, thats why we stik to the music, its always been a common melding ground to stop amongst us (israelite and arab and/or muslim )

i kno it seems like i went off topic but its hard to explain coming from this background.
point is Saddam and many others in the region want to wipe off the face of the earth anyone not stuck in that system of thinking, do i say kill them in return?

if it was an imminent thing in the nature of defense then yes kill them.
but if something happened already and were trying to do it equal weights andd measures with a democraticc mentality,
then throw em in the cell for life if he's guilty i think thats more suffering than firing squad and hanging combined, its mental death at its finest.

[Dex Methorphan]

So was it the right thing to do or not?

Killing someone for killing people seems a bit odd to me. Always has.


Only time will tell if it was a mistake or not.


Also, on the whole "if it were bush" thing, I'd like to see Bush jailed for war crimes. Not executed.

[smutek]

Also, on the whole "if it were bush" thing, I'd like to see Bush jailed for war crimes. Not executed.

Same here.

[Machinesworking]

point is Saddam and many others in the region want to wipe off the face of the earth anyone not stuck in that system of thinking, do i say kill them in return?

You can't condemn somebody for a thought crime. With that logic, Iran and North Korea would have ample proof that the USA needs to be overthrown. You have to take the moral higher ground here I believe, otherwise you end up becoming the thing you hate.

if it was an imminent thing in the nature of defense then yes kill them.
but if something happened already and were trying to do it equal weights andd measures with a democraticc mentality,
then throw em in the cell for life if he's guilty i think thats more suffering than firing squad and hanging combined, its mental death at its finest.

Totally, and if in some rare chance a nation is in the wrong, then that person is let free. That is in it's purest form a belief in freedom. You can't say you're for freedom if you are only for freedom of your ideology. It's all or none there.

[Justin Thyme]

This has been a surprising thread.

For those that feel Saddam should not have been put to death, some food for thought....France was "civilized" with Napoleon and just exiled him...he came back to power. The Ayatolla Khomeni (sp?) had been exiled, yet returned with the Iranian revolution. Matter of fact, Saddam himself was at one time exiled, and at another sentenced to death in absentia via a legal Iraqi court WITHOUT western intervention back in the 50's or 60's. If nothing else, this became the fulfillment of that court decision.

And this doesn't even touch on the several future trials in which he would likely have been charged for numerous other attrocities.

While I don't think the death penalty should be used lightly, I think those that are remotely sympathetic to the value of one evil life (Saddam's) should try to have similar sympathy towards the tens, hundreds, thousands....which he is directly responsibly for killing.

The biggest problem is that many people in the west are completely incapable of understanding the culture and history of that part of the world. They try to impose western philosophy and law to a region that has never truly been guided by those views.

[Meef Chaloin]

im not convinced he is dead, or if he is that he died the other day....
you know who he thought he was descended from?

[sweetjesus]

im not convinced he is dead, or if he is that he died the other day....
you know who he thought he was descended from?

i dunno
theres strict rules as to how death is dealt with in the islamic world. had they strayed they would have been hammered for it.

i dont believe any of this stuff regarding any conspiracies as to the event itself.
the best thing is the usa didnt have to meddle directly past the trial.

[Justin Thyme]

i dunno
theres strict rules as to how death is dealt with in the islamic world. had they strayed they would have been hammered for it.

i dont believe any of this stuff regarding any conspiracies as to the event itself.
the best thing is the usa didnt have to meddle directly past the trial.

I agree. Arab culture is very honor related. To lie about his execution would not be honorable.

I also agree that it is best that it was an Iraqi court and Iraqi executioners, even if the US was instrumental in his downfall and capture.

[hacktheplanet]

I have mixed feelings about the execution. On one hand, it's great that such a horrible fucking asshole got it, but of course like on the first page of this thread, other governments needed to try him.

Execution was the right thing to do, in my opinion, but not before other governments had their time with him. Were he imprisoned for life, I bet some of his followers would've attempted to bring him back to power. That would've been a major nutroll.