(Originally written for Gair Rhydd when Saddam was sentenced, reposted here in light of his execution)
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Saddam Hussein’s life for the 148 lives taken by him in the town of Dujail back in 1982. In the face of such evil, might we this once consider the death penalty justified?
Two thousand years ago, a radical and revolutionary teacher in the Middle East proclaimed a message that flew in the face of accepted human wisdom and culture. He preached reconciliation rather than retribution, and a love not just for one’s neighbours, but our enemies as well. Does such teaching have any relevance to the practical realities of the twenty-first century, supposedly a time of war between civilization and terror?
If we take such teaching to mean that we should just pat Saddam Hussein on the head and let him go out of some notion of forgiveness, then no. But Christ warned us to take the plank out of our own eye, in order that we can see clearly to remove the speck from the eye of our brother. The principle is to put our own house in order first, not abandon the pursuit of justice.
Saddam Hussein was clearly an unpleasant and evil man, but this tin-pot dictator has somehow been transformed in the popular imagination by Western media into a bogeyman, an embodiment of evil plotting world domination in a way that would put the most chilling Bond villain to shame. But we must not use this man’s evil as a cloak for the wrongs of the West.
Back in the 1980s, America was busy selling weapons and aircraft to Saddam Hussein. Responsible for reopening US relations with Iraq in the early eighties after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war was none other than Donald Rumsfeld, just at the same time Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran. Saddam himself had close links with the CIA.
America was perfectly happy for Saddam Hussein to do as he wished in Iraq as long as he did not threaten US interests. Once he did so on August 2, 1990 by invading Kuwait, he suddenly became an evil tyrant and a threat in the eyes of the West rather than a useful asset.
The Iraq War was not motivated by a desire to liberate the Iraqi people, or to spread democracy or out of an abstract ambition for global security. One only has to look to countries such as Zimbabwe where there is tyranny but no threat to Western interests to see the West’s true motives. The Iraq War was motivated by American and British self-interest, which directly lead to a conflict resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.
Our politicians justified this on the basis of the threat posed by Weapons of Mass Destruction, something that proved to be entirely false. Having made a misjudgement on such a massive scale, the least Bush and Blair could have done was to have the decency to resign.
This is not to justify or vindicate Saddam Hussein in any way; the wrongs of our politicians does not lessen Saddam’s evil, any more than his wrongdoings lessen the hypocrisy of our leaders.
If they wanted to oust Saddam then our leaders should have had the guts to make an honest case on their real reasons of national self-interest. Better yet, they should have the integrity to admit to past wrongs in foreign policy and seek to follow through a genuinely moral foreign policy consistently, and not just when it suits them as a PR stunt to justify the latest ploy in Western interests.
“Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”. This is not a command to abandon the pursuit of justice. Rather, it calls us to examine ourselves, our own actions and motivations, before rushing in to condemn others. Considering our own track record, we would do well to pause and reflect before hurrying to crow in triumph over Saddam’s sentence.
So what of the death sentence? If we really believe killing to be wrong, and wish Saddam Hussein to face justice for killing, then how can we consistently advocate state-sanctioned murder? What’s more, there is a sense in which killing is too good for him; it would allow him to escape facing the consequences of his actions in the present life.
If we seriously believe in Western values like the fundamental value of human life, then we should be seeking to promote this in Iraq as much as political systems such as democracy.
Of course, the whole massively misguided misadventure in Iraq should give us pause before hastily trying to change the culture and practices of a nation in our own image. Our methods should be talking to people, engaging with other cultures, seeking to win people over through argument and example.
The trial of Saddam Hussein should be a reminder to us of the capacity for evil that is present in every one of us and in every culture. Let us seek to promote a higher standard of justice and compassion, starting with changing our own actions, rather than stooping to the same level.
