Lee Harris: The Uses of Compassion, Should we feel sympathy or pity for Saddam's fall & humiliation?

Tech Central Station ^ | 12/18/2003  | Lee Harris

[PleaseNoMore]

I can understand what you are saying and agree with it. I have watched the video tapes and read the accounts of the atrocities perpetrated by Hussein and have wept over each one. I believe that Hussein should be put to death for his crimes. I believe that death is the only form of justice we can provide for him. That being said, I will still pray for his soul.

[MEG33]

Please pray for the victims who did not murder ,maim,rape and torture,too.

[Sabatier]

What bothers me about the cardinal's handwringing is the incredible misplaced emphasis.

Rather than fretting over how one monster is treated we should lament how hundreds of thousands innocent Kurds were treated by Saddam or millions of Iraquis under his rule.

Crimes against innocents may be a tender subject for the Church these days in light of the problem with pedophile priests. Unfortunately the cardinal just reinforces the impression that the Church is more concerned with the powerful than the weak and vulnerable.

And don't worry, Saddam is still powerful. All he has to do is dress like a mullah and thousands of misguided Moslems will rally around him like the second coming of Mohammed.

[optimistically_conservative]

Lee Harris misses the point here.

Saddam was not beaten by our soldiers, so the analogy is baseless.

Saddam chose the circumstances of his capture. His was not humiliated by us, he humiliated himself by becoming a fugitive and the conditions he created to unsuccessfully hide and then surrender.

It's true that our moral instinct is untroubled when our ignorance is complete. However, my moral instinct is not to sympathize or fret over the condition Saddam was found in. Saddam had many choices. He chose to run rather than surrender. He chose to hide rather than lead. He chose to forego basic hygiene while nursing his delusions.

I am also not ignorant of the professionalism of our soldiers. Saddam was not, and will not, be mistreated - by us nor will we allow those most deserving of vengence to mistreat him.

He invokes no sympathy.

[PleaseNoMore]

Of course I will ( and do ).

[optimistically_conservative]

BUT, I also believe that it is my duty, as a beliver in Christ, to pray for him and his salvation.

Can you provide the basis for this? Not just praying for help in personally forgiving Saddam, but acting as defense attorney to the Almighty for Saddam?

[Tolik]

His argument is not with you. Honestly, I doubt Harris himself had any sympathy to Saddam. (I am in no position to speak for him, I can only infer from what I read over the last few years). His argument is with that people who do have such instinctive sympathy and he is using analogies and logic that supposed to ring a bell to them.

You and I are the choir he does not need to preach to.

[PleaseNoMore]

I consider Jesus charging us with praying for our enemies to be ( one of )the basis for my beliefs.

[missyme]

I think as I looked at his pictures I seperated the tyrant from the Drunk Bum he apperared to be, I feel sorry he took the rode he did, he made himself to be greater than G-d when he inflicted his punishment on the innocent.

He will serve justice in this world but he can reedem himself with G-d the True G-d of the World and his son Jesus Christ who offers forgiveness should he ask for it.

If he chooses not to than I feel sorry for the destiny he will be soon to embark upon.

[gogeo]

I do not believe Jesus asks us to pray for evil.

[optimistically_conservative]

Jesus asked us to love our enemies and pray for those that use and persecute us. He and Steven provide examples of a prayer of forgiveness.

Matthew 5:44
Luke 6:28; 23:34
Acts 7:59-60

I can understand forgiving Saddam in prayer any wrong he has committed against you individually. I can understand a prayer that He will send a laborer of His work to Saddam.

Can you help me understand a prayer of intercession that He forgive Saddam's sins against others?

I can't find where I am charged to pray for Saddam's salvation.

[optimistically_conservative]

Steven -> Stephen

[PleaseNoMore]

My specific prayer for people like Hussein is that the Lord will place laborers in their paths and that the Holy Spirit will prick or soften their hearts and that they will receive the message of salvation.

God's will is that no man perish. His word says this. He sent His only begotten to be the sacrifice for all mankind. I believe that God's love is awesome enough that He could and would forgive Hussein and others like him. However, I am not excusing Hussein from man's judgement on this earth for his crimes so please, do not think that I am.

[Geritol]

"Sad resignation that he was once an innocent child and his soul became filled with evil."

I share your sadness that people have the capacity for such evil. It is never a happy time to see anyone's sin, or the pain it inevitably causes them and those they have power over. It is not a time for joy when people are suffering, even when it is rather deserved. I would much rather see people repenting from their evil and minimizing the pain of life.

I do have to disagree with your apparent assertion that babies are good, lacking evil. Each of us is born with a death sentence, and we each go downhill from there. It is easy to look at some persons sin and say that it is deserving of terrible punishment here on earth. We compare them to ourselves. We ignore the fact that each of us has earned a second death by our actions, a death and punishment infinitely worse than anything that is possible to inflict on this physical planet. That is something to be sad about. That is something to fear.

[jwalsh07]

When good defeats evil, I rejoice.

[lainde]

ping me please! Thank goodness for DSL!

[Tolik]

You are on the list. Thanks.

[happygrl]

The cardinal is a leftist prig who simply used Hussein and compassion in the same sentence so he could launch most likely not his first diatribe against the U.S.. Pure and simple.

Agreed.

I think Mr. Lee's point is also that the Cardinal is lacking in moral imagination.

Not the kind of man who should be sitting as a leader in the Church.