Saddam Hussein Hangs

Killing Saddam Hussein is no solution, say churches -05/11/06

The Vatican has said that it would be wrong to execute former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and other opponents of the death penalty – including peace churches (Mennonites, Quakers, and Brethren in Christ) and ecumenical bodies – are likely to argue that such an outcome would be counterproductive as well as morally corrosive.The concern of church and human rights comes after the verdict of death by hanging was passed upon Saddam after the first of two projected trials in Iraq, following the ex-president’s seizure by the Americans after the US-led invasion and occupation of the country in 2003.Reaction on the streets of Baghdad and in other parts of Iraq was mixed, and largely divided on established political and sectarian lines – highlighting one of the major concerns for the fragile future of the country.Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's Council for Justice and Peace, said today that carrying out the death sentence by hanging would be an unjustifiably vindictive action, even though Saddam Hussein has committed crimes against humanity, because every life is sacred."For me, punishing a crime with another crime - which is what killing for vindication is - would mean that we are still at the point of demanding an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," reported Italian news agency Ansa.Added Cardinal Martino: "Unfortunately, Iraq is one of the few countries that have not yet made the civilised choice of abolishing the death penalty." In 2003 he angered the United States government when he criticised US troops for treating Saddam like an animal when they took him captive, dragging him out of a hole in the ground.The pictures of Saddam’s medical examination broadcast on national TV were said by some lawyers to be in flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention. Insurgents subsequently meted out the same treatment to captured coalition troops.Groups like Christian Peacemaker Teams, whose reconciliation work inside the country began before the invasion, have long argued that it is important to break rather than feed the cycle of violence.Questions have also been raised about the conduct of the trial. But opponents of the brutal Saddam regime and many of his victims were mainly celebrating the execution verdict tonight.The British government is against the death penalty, but its protests against the verdict have so far verged from non-existent to muted. A spokesperson said that the handling of the case “was a matter for the Iraqi government and people.”Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said that it would be wrong and unhelpful for the ex-dictator to be killed, however. At the same time he recognised the thirst for justice among Saddam’s victims.English clergyman Dr Andrew White, vicar of St George’s Anglican Church in Baghdad, said on BBC radio this morning that the verdict was an appropriate one. But many other church leaders in the USA and Europe disagree.Simon Barrow, co-director of the UK Christian think tank Ekklesia, said that the churches needed to speak out consistently against all kinds of violence, both by states an by armed terror groups.“The British government was complicit in the war, and it cannot evade its responsibility in this”, he added. “Humanly speaking, the desire for revenge against Saddam is entirely understandable – but it is politically unwise, and morally it contributes to the climate of increasing sectarian murder which is threatening to unpick what remains of Iraqi society in the aftermath of an armed intervention that has brought little justice and no peace.”Ekklesia, which relates to Christian Peacemaker Teams, has highlighted the destructive consequences of the “myth of redemptive violence” within the world order – the quasi-religious but also secular ideology which encourages to believe that killing is a solution.


Meditation XVII
from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
Nunc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris.Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
Perchance he for whom this bell tolls1 may be so ill as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me and see my state may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that2. The church is catholic, universal, so are all her3 actions; all that she does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that head which is my head too4, and ingrafted into the body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is of one author5 and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language6; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice7; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves8 again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another9. As therefore the bell that rings a sermon calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness. There was a contention10 as far as a suit (in which piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were mingled) which of the religious orders should ring to prayers first in the morning; and it was determined that they should ring first that rose earliest. If we understand aright the dignity of this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to make it ours by rising early11, in that application, that it might be ours as well as his whose indeed it is. The bell doth toll for him that thinks it doth; and though it intermit12 again, yet from that minute that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God. Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this world? No man is an island13, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory14 were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee15. Neither can we call this a begging of misery or a borrowing of misery16, as though we are not miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors17. Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction. If a man carry treasure in bullion18, or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray19 him as he travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it. Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another's dangers I take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security20.
John Donne (Anglican priest) 1624
Hear the Meditation read aloud at Global Language Resources