[Clive]
Martin Peretz isn’t impressed with calls for a reprieve:
Italian Prime Minister Prodi has now protested the anticipated execution by hanging of Saddam Hussein because he doesn’t believe in capital punishment. I don’t believe in capital punishment either. Did Prodi believe the death sentence for Adolf Eichmann also wrong? I didn’t. Even if Saddam is not exactly in the category of Eichmann, he – like Pol Pot and other leaders of deliberately killer regimes – has no claim on our conscience. What’s more there is something prissy and finicky in Prodi if Saddam’s fate can touch his soul.
Well, if Prodi is genuinely opposed to the death penalty, then he’s right to speak up. But I’m with Peretz on this one, despite feeling uncomfortable about my double-standards. I’m glad we don’t routinely execute murderers in the UK (the Japanese hanged four convicts over Christmas, in case you hadn’t heard) yet I do lean toward what you could call the Nuremberg Principle, i.e. some crimes are so heinous that only the ultimate penalty will do. (One of my all-time favourite books is Albert Speer’s prison diaries but if truth be told, the former Armaments Minister probably deserved to be hanged instead of being given 20 years.) In Saddam’s case, justice would have been best served if he’d been given a quick hearing by his fellow-Iraqis and then dispatched, Ceausescu-style. The trial in Baghdad became an ugly farce very early on.
Bronwen Maddox states the opposite view in today’s London Times:
The rapid confirmation of the death sentence against Saddam Hussein is a long step backwards for Iraq. It is a brutal, if inevitable, display of victor’s justice that offends the principles that the US said it sought to uphold in toppling Iraq’s dictator.
BTW, Peretz also has a good post on Tony Blair’s dodgy holidaying habits and his taste for schmoozing with the super-rich. That’s one side of TB’s character which has always baffled me.
[Photo: AFP]
The Dish 