<<By taking Saddam's life, Iraqis do justice.
<<BY MARTY PERETZ
Sunday, January 7, 2007
<<This is not the case of Oliver David Cruz, who was executed on Aug. 9, 2000. Cruz, whose IQ ranged from 63 to 83, had raped and murdered a 24-year-old woman stationed at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. If Cruz had lived until 2002, when the Supreme Court ruled the death sentence could not be imposed on mentally retarded people, he would have spent his life in prison. He was what we used to call, unsentimentally but truthfully, "an idiot." To me it was axiomatic that killing him was unjust. I do not ever really feel that the state is righteous when it snuffs out even a hardened criminal's breath.>>
Establishing good "humanitarian" credentials: just so we know, Marty Peretz is against executing idiots for their crimes. Wow. Does this guy stand at the right hand of God or what?
<<Saddam Hussein's execution was another matter entirely. Those who do not see that are blind to the implicit social compact of any polity, and to its always precarious situation. >>
You either see it Marty's way or you're "blind to the implicit social compact of any polity."
<<What this tyrant did in murdering hundreds of thousands and terrorizing millions more, within Iraq and outside it, was to normalize brutality . . . >>
Unlike various US-backed regimes in Latin America, Indonesia and the Middle East, who normalized . . . well, brutality.
<< . . . establish falsity and hysteria as the common language . . . >>
oh yeah, falsity and hysteria. You mean like "Saddam's got WMD and he's gonna give 'em to terrorists so we're all gonna die if we don't get him first?"
<< and routinely invade the boundaries of private life.>>
No shit! Don't tell me that bastard also got librarians to turn over their users' reading lists too! Is there no end to his infamy?
<<Saddam's crimes unraveled whatever authenticity and spontaneity was possible in the artificial confines of a post-Versailles state.>>
Uhh. I guess. That's bad huh? When authenticity and spontaneity are unraveled in a post-Versailles state, that's . . . GNARLY!
<<He also brought dread to this state's neighbors. Men and women trembled at his name. >>
Yeah, I
KNOW! They thought he was gonna
INVADE them! And drop white phosphorus and JDAMs on them! And rape their teenage daughters and kill their families and put them in torture chambers!
<<And for what purpose did Saddam put the people of Iraq and the region through these horrors? For the nihilistic purpose of sustaining his rule and that of his clan. >>
See now that's what I mean about those stinking Ay-rabs. Can't they just kill for oil, like civilized people do?
<<And yet, as no one has reminded us in recent times, he also murdered kith and kin.>>
Strangely enough, a crime for which he was never charged.
<<Seen from this perspective, the attacks on Saddam's death sentence, self-righteous and oh, so elementally moral, are petty and falsely framed.>>
Marty, when a true humanitarian like you says so, who are we to disagree?
<< I am afraid it is the Vatican that has failed humankind most glaringly in this regard. >>
The
Vatican? Who the fuck needs those mediaeval losers when our moral compass can be set by Marty Peretz of the New Republic, neo-con and true Zionist hard-liner?
<<True, it is not the Vicar of Christ who has spoken, but his designate, Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. >>
Thank God the Pope doesn't know about this!
<<Rome tends to speak portentously, urbi et orbi. Yet such speech is also often simple-minded.>>
Sure. It's simple-minded portentous, the Roman style. But what were those burps that you wrote in after "portentously?"
<<"Capital punishment is not natural death," said Cardinal Martino. OK. That's obvious. So what? "Life is a gift that the Lord has given us," the cardinal continued, "and we must protect it from conception until natural death." In this rendering, are we supposed to imagine that Saddam is an innocent unborn fetus in his mother's womb? Is this a debate over abortion? Does Cardinal Martino have no conception of the dimensions of the tyrant's crimes? >>
Nah. Martino? How could he have any conception of the dimensions of the tyrant's crimes? He spent the last 20 years of his life curled up in the wombs of super-sized mothers, getting to know their unborn fetuses at close quarters, the better to advocate for them when he got out.
<<(Cardinal Martino does not always speak in such pabulum. He is often aggressive, as when he condemned the allied intervention in Iraq as a "war of aggression." >>
A war of
aggression?? What is he, some fucking lunatic? Does he know how close Saddam came to liquidating the entire U.S.A. with his weapons of mass destruction?
<<The Vatican then told journalists that the cardinal was speaking for himself, not for John Paul II. >>
Whew, THAT'S good. Means nobody has to listen to a single fucking word the guy says. Who is this turd-packing priest anyway, just the Pope's delegate and the head of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace - - fuck,
sirs is more in touch with the situation than this chump.
<<Martino picked up many anti-American tropes during the 16 years he represented the Church at the U.N. >>
MANY? Shit, just ONE would be enough to qualify the guy to be on your permanent IGNORE list for the rest of his natural life.
<<Sixteen years, poor man, no wonder, he's a little overwrought and also disingenuous.)>>
Marty, on the other hand, the permanent Zionist agent, is the very model of cool (as this very article proves) and journalistic integrity.
<<Of course, many of the other critics of the death sentence do not speak of life as a benefaction from God. The folks who echo Amnesty International's denunciation would be horrified at the sheer thought. Ditto the European Union. The same for Romano Prodi, the socialist prime minister of Italy. And the antiterrorism officer at the U.N. Plus the governments of France, Denmark, Portugal, Spain and Germany.>>
Well there ya have it, folks. How could any of those Godless Europeans who refuse to protect life from the moment of conception have any real bona fide objection to the death penalty in general or to the execution of Saddam Hussein in particular?
NOW can you see 'em for the terrorist fronts they really are?
<<Marco Pancetta, head of the Radical Party in Italy, had declared a hunger strike, was ready to go to Baghdad to petition for a "pardon." Yes, a hunger strike. Until death? Does Cardinal Martino believe a hunger strike natural? And, yes, a pardon. Was he out of his mind? Saddam's death has cheated Mr. Pancetta of his foolishness. Had the convict lived, we would have had to endure candlelight vigils throughout the soft countries. Soft power, indeed.>>
Crypto-fascist lunatic logic working at its finest. Probably the best example of it in the whole article, although there are many examples almost as fine. Marco Pancetta opposes Saddam's execution. Marco Pancetta is crazy. THEREFORE all who oppose Saddam's execution are crazy. Q.E.D.
<<The burden of most of these objections to the death penalty is that the trial was not really fair.>>
HAW HAW HAW. Now is that not absolutely hilarious folks? Not fair? NOT FAIR? all betcha those leftie lunatics will be claiming next that the trial of the Scottsboro Boys was not fair.
<< Now, these were certainly the most judicious legal proceedings ever held in modern Iraq. >>
Remember I told you there were
many fine examples of crypto-fascist lunatic logic in this article?
<<Is this not superior to victors' justice? >>
Actually, it IS victor's justice.
<<The defendant had legal counsel of his own choosing . . . >>
THREE of whom were shot to death in the course of the trial . . .
<< among them Ramsey Clark, not so mentally stable is my guess, but a former attorney-general of the U.S. and not an easily intimidated advocate. >>
How much better can defence counsel get than mentally unstable AND unintimidated?
<<What's more, as Fouad Ajami has pointed out, the accused performed histrionics that were tolerated even though they made havoc of courtroom order. If Saddam were the accused in a U.S. tribunal, he would have been bound and gagged. In Saddam's own Iraq, he would have been lashed, at a minimum.>>
Uh, the problem, I think is not that Saddam was or was not bound, gagged or lashed "at a minimum." The
problem, Mr. Peretz, is that practically immediately after the end of one of the most farcical trials of the past sixty-two years, the accused was hustled off to the gallows by U.S. helicopter and hanged amidst the jeers and taunts of a partisan rabble snapping souvenir photos on their cellphones. Sorta taking away the pretence of due process, grve and impartial justice, etc. Some Sunnis seemed to not like it.
<<The Arab world is somewhat split about the sentence. Yemen, little Yemen, has actually announced that the country "unanimously" condemns everything about the trial: the process, the verdict and the punishment. You get some sense of what political discourse is like in a state where everything is (or is said to be) unanimous. >>
Yemen? The state of political discourse in Yemen? Are you trying to tell me that Yemen is NOT a free marketplace of ideas such as Voltaire had always dreamed of?
GET OWDDA HEAH!!! <<Doubtless, Sunni Baathists were very close to unanimous in opposing it. But the Arab world and its non-Arab Muslim cousins, whatever they feel about the armed foreign presence in Iraq, could not honestly make the case against the penalty of death . . . Moderate Arabs will breathe a sigh of relief now that the dictator is dead. And also those non-moderate Arabs whom he threatened.>>
Well what a relief. Those moderate Arabs will finally stop planting roadside bombs and shooting at their American liberators. Our troops will be safe at last!
<<Two surprising trends, one a great relief. The relief is that the people of Western Europe seem to be more sensible than their governments. Even the French, the Italians, the Spanish and others support the taking of Saddam's life. Like the Poles, and their prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski. You have to have lived under a tyranny within your own memory to know why the tyrant should be punished, and punished decisively.>>
Well, it's self-evident. Punishing the tyrant immediately brings back to life all the people that he killed. It's like magic!
<<The other trend is a bit confusing. It shows itself especially in our stalwart ally, Great Britain, where the Labour government still adheres to the traditional alliance, in war and in peace. Margaret Beckett, Tony Blair's foreign secretary, spoke strongly in support of the hangman's noose.>>
Margaret, you sweetheart. Imagine being in favour of BOTH the illegal invasion of Iraq AND the execution of the country's leader. You ARE a radical at heart, aren't you?
<<But, ironically, there were counter-indications from the Tory right. Frustrated by its years in the political wilderness, the Conservatives much resent Labour's alliance with George Bush, even though they ridicule it. The brilliant showman-parliamentarian Boris Johnson, shadow minister for higher education, elicited from Ms. Beckett's predecessor, Jack Straw, already two years ago a statement of opposition to the ultimate penalty. Relying on Britain's longstanding opposition to capital punishment, they were working in consort against Mr. Blair's fidelity to how America sees the world. The prospect of Saddam's hanging would be their instrument.>>
I see. The country has a "longstanding opposition to capital punishment" but the Tories, those treasonous little shits, are actually honouring the longstanding position of their country even if it means going against Mr. Blair's fidelity to America. Well I never!
<<Another, more recent sign of Conservative estrangement (not the only one) from the historically axiomatic bond with the U.S. is a querulous on-line column by the querulous Peregrine Worsthorne asserting that "Saddam was a butcher, so was Truman." >>
Truman? The only man in history to allow nuclear attacks on two densely populated cities, a butcher? Is that Peragee Worst Whore a lunatic or what?
<<Now, this is not a logical argument for anything.>>
Of course not. "Logical" in the fascist lexicon means that although Saddam was a butcher, Truman had to be a saint.
<< But his point was that Saddam's "cruel tyranny had at least provided the people with a degree of security quite unimaginable under conditions of freedom and democracy . . . a reign of fear may be the only effective system of government." This is cynicism of an especially low order. And if it gains currency in the house of Winston Churchill, where can it not become common wisdom?>>
It's actually common wisdom in the U.S.A., where tyrants just like Saddam are supported all over the globe. It was the philosophy of Ronald Reagan, who supported the Pinochet dictatorship and the Argentine junta and the Central American death squads, and it's the philosophy of today's "President" who supports the dictators of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and other tyrannical Arab and other Third World countries.
<<Saddam has already swung from the ropes. May his soul be tormented for eternity. >>
Gee, good thing Marty's not
vindictive.<<If Saddam were a pious and literate Christian--actually, he wasn't even a pious Muslim--he might have recognized, as Dante did for Nimrod, that "he was his own accuser." His life is its own accusation.>>
So . . . you mean Saddam
wasn't innocent of all charges?
<<The question, then, is not whether Iraq will recover from the oppressor's death. The question is whether Iraq will recover from the oppressor's rule. The execution of this monstrous man was not intended to be a deterrent to evil. There are probably no deterrents to real evil and real evildoers. But a community can punish its own pharaohs. >>
So the "community" that consisted of Kurds, Shi'a and U.S. occupiers punished its very own Sunni pharaoh? But that can't be - - because still the Sunni are shooting.
<<That punishment will be the most significant sovereign act the people of Iraq have ever done. >>
I bet it'll rank right up there with the sovereign act of the people of France executing their own communists and Jews under the leadership of the heroic Pierre Laval, the head of the Vichy government.
<<This is an act of recovery by itself.>>
It sure is, and if you watch the news tonight, you can see how much they've recovered.
