No problem. Spare ribs it is...
Posted on 11/12/2006 10:01:56 PM PST by Tim Long
TOKYO (AFP) - Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has appealed for Saddam Hussein's life to be spared, saying the deposed Iraqi president was not beyond redemption.
"The death penalty is said to fulfil a preventive function, yet it is clearly a form of revenge," the Nobel peace laureate told reporters as he ended a two-week visit to Japan.
"However horrible an act a person may have committed, everyone has the potential to improve and correct himself," he said.
"I hope that in the case of Saddam Hussein, as with all others, that human life will be respected and spared."
An Iraqi court sentenced Saddam, ousted in a US-led invasion in 2003, to hang on November 5 for the deaths of 148 Shiites in an Iraqi village in 1982, after an attempt to assassinate him.
Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has said he expected Saddam to be hanged before the end of the year.
The Dalai Lama has been critical of the US-led invasion of Iraq despite his relationship with US President George W. Bush, who has met with him in defiance of China.
China, which sent troops into Tibet in 1950, accuses the Buddhist monk of being a "splittist" and opposes his frequent travels overseas.
The Dalai Lama has said he was seeking greater autonomy for the Himalayan region within China and opposed all forms of violence. He fled into exile in India in 1959.
But I want him speared.
The Dalai Lama is entitled to express his opinion, and the Iraqis may take as much or as little notice of it as they wish.
That said, I wonder if the live execution thread will be as much fun as the one for Tookie Williams?
I agree! He should be speared! That would be a fitting way for him to go.
What?!? SPARED???
Nevermind.
Problems with pacifists is, someone else has to do their dirty work and they never appreciate it.
I prefer to see him hanged from the point of view of justice.
Actually, if we were going for any real justice, he oughta be shredded. Slowly and publicly, preferably over an extended period of time.
Shred a bit, heal a bit, shred a bit, heal a bit. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But leaving aside the issue of justice for a moment, the real value of seeing Saddam at the end of a rope is what I commented the day of his sentencing: seeing Saddam get his just desserts just might make one or two other would-be tinpot dictators think twice before emulating his career.
Or, to put it conversely, what the Dulleye Llama is arguing for really represents nothing less than the empowerment of those who mass-murder other human beings. The eventual unintended consequences are hardly in line with his ideals of respect for human life.
But it seems a lot of people have difficulty with the concept of respecting the lives of the innocent as contrasted with respecting the lives of those who murder them.
Exactly. The absolutist view of capital punishment ignores the real-life consequences. For instance, what if Hitler could have been assassinated before millions of innocent human beings were exterminated as if they were so many vermin? Anti-death penalty absolutism tacitly says that the millions of victims were expendable, so long as the most hideous example of human life is revered as sacred.
keep in mind that in the events of...
Saddam is spared,
Iraq splits up,
...
Saddam would be very inconvienent to have around,
he might get back into power,
best would be to kill him when it is
possible to do so.
Feed the Deli Llama to Saddam
Why not grant him total consciousness on his deathbed and leave it at that? At least he'd have that going for him, which is nice.
It feels like the whiners are trying to take over the world.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.