Saddam will finally hang from a rope. I’m against the death penalty in almost all cases, but a very few require it. Let’s hope that it helps to bring some peace to a war savaged country. It may even provide a good occasion for the U.S. to announce that Iraqis are going to have to face down the terrorists and the militias themselves, for as long as people expect the indefinite presence of American forces, there is less incentive than otherwise to negotiate and little reason to think that deals cut by locals will be respected or stable, and therefore little reason to cut those deals.
Great. “I’m against the death penalty except in cases when I think it is useful for some reason”. What a logic! All those relatives of victims, who demand a death penalty for murders of their loved ones, would praise it – they also don’t want a death penalty in general, they want it only in their own case.
R2D2, mah fren’! Your “quote” just ain’t what Palmer wrote.
Thank you for pointing that out, Samantha. Indeed, I did not write “useful for some reason,” which would be altogether too broad, but “a very few require it.” Had Hitler been captured after WWII, for example, it would have been necessary to kill him, especially considering the fanatical support he had among the true believers. Similarly for the evil Pol Pot. Those are justified exceptions to the general presumption against the death penalty. I don’t find that illogical or counter intuitive.
The imperative here is that these bad people must be _stopped_. I wonder if Saddam needs to be killed to ensure he cannot perpetrate further evil. Perhaps so.
In other news, that murderous creep Gerald Ford, who authorized the East Timor invasion which killed >200,000 civilians, has gone the way of all flesh. Another data point in favor of “only the good die young.”
Samantha,
It wasn’t a quote, but an attempt to generalise an idea behind the words of Dr. Palmer. He thinks that “a very few require” [death penalty]. Who can judge? Dr. Palmer thinks that it should go for Hitler, Pol Pot and Saddam. Someone else would add Robert Mugabe or Islam Karimov. Others would add Usama bin Laden. And others would add only one particular maniac, who has killed their relative. Which should be the criteria? You are either for the death penalty and may argue about the cases where it should be imposed, or you are against it. There is no middle ground.
When attempting to generalize an idea, it is wise to avoid quotation marks, as the material inside them may be mistaken for a quotation. It’s better to state that one is attempting to generalize an idea and assume the attendant risk that one might have failed to understand the general idea itself, which is the case here.
But setting that aside, yes, I would indeed add Osama bin Laden to the list of people who ought to be killed. A central criteria is that the person has committed terrible crimes and, if allowed to live, will inspire others to continue with such crimes.
The categorical statements by R2D2 above are simply not serious. It’s not a matter of “no middle ground,” but of setting out and applying criteria for choices, which often require judgement calls. (Would Hitler’s continued life after WWII have inspired Nazi terrorists, or not? There is no a priori answer, but most — maybe all — reasonable people would have concluded that a live Hitler would have been a danger.) Ocalan in Turkey (a real bastard for sure) and Abimail Guzman of the Shining Path in Peru (terrorist killers with big plans who — to be sure — only managed to carry out their plots on a smaller scale than Hitler or even Saddam) have been imprisoned for life in those countries and the consequences seem to have been acceptable. I’d not be in favor of killing them. (They had no such qualms about killing off their enemies or rivals, it should be noted.) But Saddam has to be killed. It surely won’t bring the civil war to a stop, but it will close a chapter in a way that may (and the risk is surely worth it) diminish the fury of the violence.
There is nothing odd, illogical, unprincipled, or in any other way suspect about a general presumption against the death penalty (especially for people who might not in fact be guilty at all, unlike, say, those who proudly announced their guilt before the whole world), combined with a small class comprising a handful of exceptions. Unless R2D2 is willing to renounce the application of human reason generally (for almost all choice situations require such judgements), there is no escape from such situations. Should one endanger innocents in taking action against the guilty? There is a presumption against exposing innocents to risk, but the acceptability of doing so depends on the extent of the danger — both the risk of a mishap and the anticipated damage such a mishap would cause — and the likelihood and the value/importance of nabbing the guilty. Such questions do not admit of puerile claims that there are “no middle grounds.”
Well, of course, you can think that it is appropriate to kill one guy for the good of millions of others. It may seem to be rational but it has nothing to do with the tradition of European humanism and with what is usually called “civilized approach”. When you are trying to punish a murderer by killing him, you should be aware that you are becoming a murderer yourself, even if you are a rational and a legitimate murderer. The years of bloody history have learned the European countries to get rid of death penalty for ANY kind of crimes, as we must not kill people, even the evil ones. Let us hope that the moment will come when the other countries of the world, including the US, will turn to a civilized modus vivendi.