it is complete now, two ends of time are neatly tied

Ding dong, Saddam is dead.

I've been thinking a lot recently about a lively debate among friends that took place years ago at Christian and Uncle Paul's apartment in Alexandria. The subject was the death penalty. I don't know how it came up, but I'd guess one or more of us had recently seen Dead Man Walking, and it was twisting our brains around and forcing us to really think about what we believed. This debate was fantastic; a continuation of that same kind of brain-twisting, it was a chance to bounce heated, passionate ideas off of people we respected, all the while knowing that friendships would not be threatened.

I was firmly on the anti- side of the death penalty argument, and thinking out loud I was able to come around to a thesis that summed up my belief: Having created society, we have the right to take society itself away from those who break the social contract (or, as it were, to remove them from society by locking them up). However, having not created life, we don't have the right to take life away from anyone. This is, of course, aside from other extremely pertinent issues such as cruel and unusual punishment, the difficulty of proving ultimate guilt especially before DNA analysis, the extra cost to the state, the fact that life imprisonment is in many cases a harsher and more deterrent punishment.

As always happens in such a debate, the question was posed: But what if someone raped and sliced up your sister or your mother? Wouldn't you want to see that person killed? Absolutely I would, in fact I would want to pull the switch, which is precisely why I believe the state should have laws that exercise better judgment than I would be able to in that kind of extreme distress.

All that being said, I think the death penalty was right for Saddam. Let me be clear: I believe that Iraq and the Iraqi people (and, indeed, the security of the United States) would be in better shape today if the U.S. had not removed him from power (though the situation would certainly be far from ideal), and it would seem that the Iraqi courts were in an unnecessary hurry to do the deed. But things being as they are, he ultimately had to be executed.

How does this fit in with my anti-death-penalty thesis? It's like this, see: Saddam Hussein didn't just break the social contract or violate society's laws. Tyranny and genocide are targeted directly at society itself. And society has a right to destroy an individual who tries to destroy society. There. The same would have applied to Pinochet, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc.

UCLA law professor Stephen Bainbridge has put together a much more scholarly and nuanced version of this argument based on, of all things, the teachings of the Catholic Church.

Your thoughts are welcome and encouraged.