by Nick Stock

Created on: January 18, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Saddam Hussein should not have been put to death.

I know, I know, I know. I know what you're thinking. That I'm about to launch into an ultra-liberal article about the evils of the death sentence and how an eye for an eye will leave everyone blind, but you're wrong. I'm not about to launch into such a diatribe. I'm glad they put him to death, but the fact of the matter is that Saddam shouldn't have survived long enough to be brought to trial. And who's to blame?

The Geneva Convention. Yep, the Geneva Convention.

The Geneva Conventions of 1949, Conventions I-IV, August 12, 1949. They outlawed political assassination. What were they thinking? I don't know, but I can guess. Leaders from countries worldwide decided that it's illegal to kill leaders from country worldwide. That's a shock.

Saddam Hussein should not have been put to death because he should have already been dead. Milosovic in Kosovo, Stalin in socialist Russia, Hussein in Iraq, Pol Pot in Cambodia: these people should have been put down like rabid animals.

This sounds barbaric, and brutal and just mean, right? Well, that's true. It's mean. It's heartless. It's cold. And it's exactly what needed to be done. Ask the thousands of refugees pouring out of Rwanda and Darfur how terrible it would be to trade one life for thousands. You'll get an interesting answer, I imagine.

Saddam Hussein is a good summary of everything that's wrong with the Middle East right now. I'd be willing to bet that he had never met a Shi'ite in his life, and yet slaughtered thousands. He didn't slaughter those of different religions than his, as so many other meglomaniacal tyrants have, but instead a different sect of his own Islam. This is similar to Greek orthodox Catholics taking up arms against the Romans. There's no rhyme or reason behind it.

Now, I consider myself a reasonably intelligent young man, a man of the times, as it were, but I just cannot wrap myself around the thought behind political assassinations, and the outlawing thereof. Shouldn't they have illegalized war? Would that not have been more prudent? Instead of killing one or two or ten evil old men, we send hundreds, thousands, millions of our young to die in their stead. That, more than anything else, is a violation of human rights.

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