Was Saddam's execution necessary?

Clutching a Quran and refusing a hood, Saddam Hussein stood on the gallows before sunrise on December 30th 2006, to be executed by vengeful countrymen after a quarter-century of remorseless brutality that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and led Iraq into disastrous wars against the Kuwait and Iran. The "Butcher of Baghdad," as he was known to millions of his oppressed people in Iraq, died at 6:05 a.m. in Iraq, hanged by the neck with a 3-cm rope looped around his neck until he was dead. He was executed after being found guilty for his role in the 1982 killings of 148 Shiite Muslims – rounded up and executed without trial after a botched assassination attempt in the Iraqi city of Dujail. Had he not been sentenced to death for those crimes, he certainly would have been sentenced to death for the murder of over 180 thousand Kurds who were killed while he was the dictator of Iraq.

I believe that a great many people worldwide including myself felt a certain feeling of satisfaction when we watched on TV (soon after his execution) the hangmen placing the noose over this despot’s head. We were cognizant of the history of this man’s brutality. He gassed thousands of men, women and children in their villages, he ordered many of his victim’s tongues cut out before they were executed, others were lowered into vats of acid while still alive, others still were ground up in large grinders while still alive. Others victims, including children were placed in cells in which they were subjected to mustard gas while they lay writhing and screaming on the floor of their cells. Some were thrown from high buildings while handcuffed. al-Qubanji, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a dominant party in the country's governing coalition said after Saddam’s execution, "He killed millions of Iraqis in prisons, in wars with neighbouring countries, and he is responsible for mass graves.” The list of obscenities brought about him and his two evil sons could go on and on but space doesn’t permit me to give my readers the full picture of their brutality against their own people.

Despite the fact that this human monster was executed after being found guilty of the murder of the 148 Shiite Muslims, there are sob sisters who maintain that he shouldn’t have been executed. Pope Benedict XVI's top prelate for justice issues, Cardinal Renato Martino, took such a tack, noting Saddam's execution punishes "a crime with another crime ... the death penalty is not a natural death."

I suppose that this prelate’s premise for his remarks was that God will wreak Man’s vengeance, not Man. Unfortunately, God wasn’t really around when Saddam’s victims were being slowly tortured to death in the hideous ways only an evil person could bring about. For example, if God was present during the pain Saddam’s victims were undergoing when their tongues were being cut out, God was merely a bystander.

As I see it, we as human beings have the right to bring justice to wrongdoers providing that it is done honestly and the accused are given their right to defend themselves. Some say that Saddam didn’t get a fair trial. I don’t know enough about what took place in his trial but surely, all that was needed to convict him was proof that he ordered the execution of 148 men and boys who didn’t get a trial. That fact was shown in evidence and that by itself was suffice to say that he was guilty as charged.

Some will say that the international court in The Hague should have tried him. If he was tried by that court, he still would have been found guilty but he wouldn’t have been executed because that court doesn’t have the authority to sentence its convicted defendants to death.

I believe that his execution may act as a balm to sooth some of the the anguish suffered by Iraqis who lost loved ones under Saddam’s rule. In my opinion, his execution was absolutely necessary. For those who don’t agree with me, consider what happened to Idi Amin, the ruthless dictator who slaughtered so many Ugandans when he was in power. He lived in luxury during his remaining years in exile before he died of old age. Saddam may not have lived in luxury if he had to serve a life sentence in prison but the idea of him still breathing when one considers how many hundreds of thousands of innocent people died under his rule, is obscene.

I believe that what was shown on Iraqi television said it for all when after airing national songs after the first announcement, it displayed a tag on the screen that read “Saddam’s execution marks the end of a dark period of Iraq’s history.’’

Hopefully, other tyrants around the world are getting the message that they too may be executed by their own people just as Saddam and the dictator of Romania were. If their executions can bring about that message, then Saddam’s recent execution is a lesson being taught to them. I hope they learn it soon before they too are put to death by their own people whom they are abusing.