Justice for whom?

You would think that freeing Sunnis, Shias and Kurds from their imperious leaders would restore the desert's cosmic balance. True, the Kurds exist semi-autonomously, the Shia majority finally has a voice in government, and the three groups are sharing the country's oil wealth. But even with Saddam Hussein arrested, tried and executed, the sectarian violence has the potential to wreak more havoc than the Baathist death squads ever did. \nSaddam Hussein may rank "with Hitler as far as history's bad men," as the editors at the Indianapolis Star stated in part of their questionand-answer session with Richard McGowan, lecturer in philosophy and religion at Butler University. However, the notion that the former president -- or any victim of capital punishment -- was beyond the point of rehabilitation or redemption in no way justifies his execution. \nMcGowan argues that a crime's punishment must protect the populace from further injustice, deter future criminals, reaffirm society's values and restore order. The death penalty serves none of these purposes. One execution does not make the world a noticeably safer place, and it has never proven an effective deterrent. As a reaffirmation of society's values, the death penalty is abhorrent, depraved and just embarrassing.\nOf all the possible crimes to commit, only one is so grave that the recognized laws of the state can be breached. Last week the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal oversaw the execution of Saddam Hussein for "crimes against humanity." In 2005, 60 Americans were executed by the state for rape and homicide. Are we to assume that the rapists and murderers were as deranged as Saddam? Or that Saddam was as pathetic as the criminals on death row?\nIf capital punishment is going to be the state's ultimate form of so-called "retributive justice," it must be reserved for the most heinous of crimes. To say that the leader of the Bloods or the Crips deserves the same punishment as the leader of the Iraqi Republican Guard only proves how capriciously the death penalty is inflicted.\nBut even if the firing squad was administered only to world leaders with standing armies who engaged in some form of ethnic cleansing, capital punishment still wouldn't serve as a meaningful deterrent for the next certifiable despot. \nJoseph Stalin had millions killed and died from a stroke; Pol Pot, who according to some reports was responsible for 3 million deaths, succumbed to heart failure; Mao Tse Tung, who may have contributed to the deaths of up to 30 million, died of Lou Gehrig's Disease. About 180,000 are dead in Darfur, and Omar al-Bashir is still at large; Kim Jong-il, Robert Mugabe, Seyed Ali Khamenei, have all been spared the stylized monotony of the International Criminal Court. Slobodan Milosevic, the lucky bastard, died in the relative luxury of the Hague's holding cell before a verdict could be rendered.\nCapital punishment, regardless of the crime or the convict, is completely inappropriate, especially when the trial is as counterfeit and chaotic as Saddam's. The death of one dictator will not stop other madmen from seizing power, and it won't bring back the dead. Justice is not a zero-sum game.