Tonight is the night that the news anchors say is the night when Saddam Hussein, somewhere in a hidden room or alley or square in Baghdad, will have a rope placed around his neck. Someone will kick whatever he's standing on out from under him and he will be left to swing there until he dies of suffocation. They say that sometimes people break their necks when they are hung. I guess those are the lucky ones.
It's hard to feel sorry for Saddam. He gasses his people. He had them killed by the dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands. He was convicted in court. This is the sentence. I don't feel sorry for him, but I don't feel good about this tonight. This does not make me feel any better about our invasion of Iraq—its reasons or its success. I feel sad about it. Not so much for him, but for all of us.
John Howard Yoder, the thoughtful Mennonite theologian wrote, "A pacifist is a person who realizes that in striking another, you harm yourself more—this is the moral consequence of violence." I'd like to think that I'm a pacifist in practice, but until you are in the situation, you can only pray that you would be a peacemaker. However, I'm quite certain that I'm a pacifist by persuasion. Yoder's statement summarizes what may be the ultimate verdict tonight. Tonight we (and, c'mon, yes it was an Iraqi court, but this is really the doing of America) we put this man to death. Couldn't happen to a more deserving person. And yet . . .are we any better off for his death? Are we more moral? More loving? More Christlike? What does his death earn the world?
I can only imagine that the families of his victims may feel some relief and closure from his death. Maybe. But many, many victim's families whose perpetrators have been executed have said that it did not give them peace or closure. It meant nothing in reality. No one came back to life. No one was reformed.
I think it's hard to be a Christian and support the penalty of death for another human being. I can't argue all the emotional and psychological reasons we all have for wanting revenge, nor can I argue the point that the person can never commit the crime again. But, for me, I can't get past the one thing—that my Lord was executed like a common criminal. He was put to death by the state. Therefore, I can't help but think that Christians owe the world a witness of peace and hope—that anyone, anyone, even someone like Saddam Hussein, can be forgiven and that the death penalty only serves to renew the world's pain, one life and death at a time.
