I finally watched Saddam Hussein's execution. I didn't want to. I wanted it to go away and to not think about the "Butcher of Baghdad" ever again. After all, this was a man who put people into shredding machines and built prisons for children and who used chemical warfare on his own people. He was an evil, evil man. Youtube wasn't around for the countless horrors that he unleashed - more than 750,000 people killed during his reign? Imagine the rage that every one of us would now feel towards him if those videos were playing constantly? Picture them - they are the stuff of horror movies. You can hear the screams and see the blood and feel the evil. He was a horrible man. He did horrible things.
Then there is his hanging and this fear - that this "new Iraq" isn't new at all. Watch the video and it seems like it is still operating under the same principles and using his methods. There wasn't any greater dignity, no sense that the "light of
democracy" had invaded the country, only the grim hanging of an evil man surrounded by taunters.
I think what horrifies so many of us in this whole situation is that we are better than that and we know that 3,000 Americans have died fighting for more than that.
The execution
Friday January 5, 2007
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The situation in Iraq has only one foundation for its brutality.
Muhammad. When the world wakes up to what is causing the death and violence sprouting from this part of earth, then maybe it can be slowed.
Are we as a culture more bothered by the fact that it was brutal or the fact that we had to see it? Brutal, torturous murder is going on every day - it's just not circulating on YouTube.
From diamond mines in Africa to the sectarian killing in Iraq it's not a new thing - And then there's that partial birth abortio...oh wait a little close to home with that one, aren't we?
It didn't bother me at all that Saddam had to endure a few minutes of undignified taunting while he waited to die. That was mere peanuts in comparison to the suffering he's inflicted on others. It bothered me greatly though that the government our troops are dying for carried out a blantantly sectarian lynching. And it REALLY bothers me that because of this fiasco even more of our young people will die through Sunni retaliations.
There was hope I'm sure that his death and even the pictures send everywhere would somehow quell he violence - would somehow relieve the need for vengeance that echoes in the religious world. The far right fundamentalists - Christian, Islam, Jew, Hindu - all of them are quite similar - they want certainty, they believe in the myth of redemptive violence - that one last act of violence will somehow bring peace. We are not so far from such violence in this country. Video games and books instill the thirst for religious violence even among Christians. There was one last act - it occurred 2000 years ago. We just don't understand it yet. The sin of the world is the need to be correct, to be right and then the willingness to kill for it. Jesus died at the hands of Rome and the collusion of his own people. Neither could have done it alone without significant violence. However, there was no relief for the powers and principalities with the death of Jesus. He overcame death. There was just the human condition left - lurking violence, simmering resentments, the desire for power over others - all the things Jesus did not need. Jesus created no victims, needed no enemies. We have not yet learned the lesson taught. We are reminded at times. Even in the violent death of a murderer, we begin to see the uselessness of such things. For it is useless to kill Saddam. If you recall, God does not ask for sacrifice but for mercy.
This is what New Testament scholar Walter Wink refers to as the "myth of redemptive violence." Jesus' Sermon's in Matthew and Luke expose this myth very well and offer a new, called reconciliation. The apostle Paul calls the gospel a gospel of reconciliation. No question this man was evil. Jesus' teachings are clear violence repaide with violence begets violence...evil for evil begets evil! Or Derek Webb (www.derekwebb.com) says "It's like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by execution...Peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication."
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