The Death of Saddam Hussein…

Though many others have talked about this, especially Sam over at his site and this piece by Grandad at headrambles, I figure I might as well drop in my own two cents with regards to the execution of Saddam Hussein.

I know I’m a bit behind the times but I was working the weekend and I only got around to it now…

Firstly, I think it was a bad idea. The reasons that the ‘pro’ side of this debate just don’t stand up for me… They go roughly as follows:

He had it coming
Probably, the best arguement of the lot. I’l be the first to admit that Saddam was a tremendously unplesent Dictator and one of the few left with real ‘name recognition’. Certainly his loss is one that the world in general is better for. However, his execution is in and of itself a barbaric act. As I’ve already said, this is the best arguement the pro side have because my main arguement against the execution is that the death penalty is wrong regardless. Now when it’s someone like Saddam people want that to go out the window, but even so I disagree.

The sentence was the Iraqis decision
There’s a couple of problems with this, with a government that can hardly claim to be in control of the nation, or even popular in it’s own country I hardly think that the sentence refllected the ‘Iraqi people’. Now, I’m by no means claiming that the people loved Saddam or didn’t want him dead but Saddam was executed by a panel of people with a vested interest in him being dead, not by a legitimate Iraqi government. The people who organised the trial were the groups attempting to claim legitimacy, and the US government - not the people as a whole.
Granted, in the state that Iraq is at the moment ‘the people as a whole’ are not exactly the best arguement, but attempting to put the claim that this was the Iraqi people’s decision is rather disingenuous I think…

The trial was legitimate and fair and the Iraqis jurisdiction.
Again, I’m not sure if the trial was legitimate. The war that deposed Saddam was illegal, regardless of whether that’s acknowledged these days or not.
The trial itself, by being held where it was held was fairly partial instead of fair. Now many will say that’s it’s impossible that Saddam could ever have been found innocent, but at the same time when the trail was so blatanly unfair it reflects badly on the west.
The war was supposed to be about bringing Iraq up to our level and the spread of democracy, when the first major trial in Iraq is held under such conditions it is not the best of starts. Also, the trial only covered one incident. There was much more that Saddam could have been held to account for and this does not give justice to all those other victims.

The execution prevented violence
The reasoning on this is that having Saddam alive as a rallying point ment that we were better off getting rid of him has some legitimacy but in this case having him dead just made him a martyr. I think in this case it’s ‘damned if you do, and damned if you don’t’ - and in this case I’d rather it be damned if we don’t.
Plus, Saddam was at this stage an irrelivancy, there’s not exactly a movement trying to seriously put him back in power, the conflict in Iraq has moved far beyond that factor at this stage. Had they moved Saddam out of Iraq the (potential) escape of him would have been a non-existant problem.

In the end, I think Saddam was executed because it was the most convient course of action. He was not killed because of an idea of ‘justice’ but for vengence. And regardless of what some would like to claim, these are not the same.

The ‘war against militant Islam’ is about proving that our system is better than theirs, Saddams death was a victory for their system because that’s how ‘they’ do things - not us.

An essay and an insult…

Well, I got my ‘four faces of violence’ essay done - now onto the other four….

Heard an interesting discription of the effect that Sinn Fein people have last night ”they’re like syphilis - at the start its just inconvienient and then it begins to rot your brain”

Four faces of violence…

Doing an essay on the four faces of violence -intentionality, unintentionality, acts and omissions. Anyone know of any good documents etc?

George Galloway at the UCC Philosoph…

So, Cian’s already covered this in a fair amount of detail anyway but I figured that I’d throw in my two cents into the conversation even so…

The basic facts first; George Galloway proposed the house motion “That this house believies US foreign policy is the greatest crime since World War II”. In opposition was the former Sinn Fein/ The Worker’s Party member and these days film producer Gerry Gregg. Gregg said something to the effect that Galloway had ‘never met a dictator he didn’t take to or take from’ and Galloway freaked out. This led to him walking out and taking a lot of people with him (though some of those I suspect just decided to leave now that Galloway - the main attraction, was gone).

Now, my opinion on this. Personally, I feel Galloway overeacted and was not exactly not being personally abusive himself. As such the whole debate took on a rather childish quality in my opinion. While obviously one has to defend their reputation Galloway’s method’s struck me as rather overly-aggressive and childish.

Will I go see Galloway speak again? Probably. Have I as much potential respect for him as I had before? I doubt it, even though in terms of his opposition to large areas of US policy and Palestine we are on the same page mostly.

Why at times I realy hate anti-abortionists….

So, at work today we found (thanks to someone bringing it to our attention) that someone had placed a load of ‘postcards’ (for lack of a better phrase presenting itself) inside many of the books.

These were all full of disgusting pictures of supposedly ‘aborted’ babies and then various political messages against abortion.

Now personally I find these sort of shock tactics for two reasons irritating.

Firstly assuming that it was the people behind the postcards that put them into the books, it’s grossly irresponsible as children especially could come across them and these were images that would turn anyone’s stomach and certainly something that children should not be introduced to.

Secondly, by placing these things in an unsolicited way in the way of people you remove from them the option of not choosing to engage you in conversation. And with such disturbing imagery there is a certain amount of cop-on that must be engaged. If I had such an image placed in front of me without someone at least asking me ‘do you want to see what abortion involves’ and I responding in the positive and there was an abortion referendum tomorrow I would vote yes to abortion simply out of spite. I found the sneaky, childish way that this was done as offensive as anything else.

But that’s what gets to me about a lot of anti-abortionists - this ‘know-it-all’ moral superiority, violently ‘you must agree with us or your a murderer’ attitude. If you want to change my mind, engage me in conversation, not in this sort of childish bullshit.

John Hume at the Philosoph.

So, John Hume, founder of the SDLP spoke at the UCC Philosophical society last night.

He made a 50-odd minute speech to the society. It was quite enjoyable, though I for one was quite suprised at the actual content of his speech which focused a lot on the benefits of the European Union as the ‘greatest forum for conflict resolution ever developed’ (to quote Mr. Hume) and on the need for education in Africa.

I can’t (for reasons of memory mostly) give you a full transcript of his ideas or of his speaking style but if any of you out there ever get a chance to see this man speak, take it.

More later.

Rape and Consent..

Came across this on my travels, hadn’t heard of Fatmammycat’s blog before but this is a realy good piece on the idea of consent. Broadly speaking I have to agree with the assessment she makes of the situation. Interesting stuff.