the sadist is going bye-bye, Permanently!

[Tapewolf]

Your homework for this week is to read A Gift From Earth by Larry Niven.

.. and not A World of Ptaavs ?

Gift From Earth specifically deals with the organ-bank problem, in that the death penalty, the way it is carried out and the fact that it is used for every single crime is central to the plot.  There are a few other short stories in that mould, Jigsaw Man and The Defenceless Dead but A Gift From Earth is especially relevant to a discussion of capital punishment whereas World of Ptavvs is not (so far as I recall, and I last read it in September)

I don't have it to hand, but as I remember:

Parlett: "Is it ethical to execute a man for theft?"
Jay: "Of course."
Parlett: "What would you say if I told you that rehabilitation of criminals was once the most significant branch of psychology?"
Jay: "That's crazy.  Why would you waste your time on rehabilitation when the organ banks are crying out for..  Oh.  I see.  No organ banks."

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

True.

However, IIRC< WoP was about 4-5 years ago when last I read it, and was about transformations and some ethical comments about what's right and what's wrong. More or less.

I may be misremembering some of it. Larry tends towards some ethical comments, however. The Forever War also has some interesting comments about it all.

To everyone else, and back to the subject at hand...
The major point about killing people is what it says about you, not what it says about the people you're killing. While Saddam needs killing, and pretty much everyone will agree with that... who else does? Where do you draw the line? And how do you ensure the line doesn't move, unless you got it wrong? How do you tell that you got it wrong? What do you do if you kill someone who is innocent? How do you prove they're not? How do you live with yourself if you let someone guilty go, through lack of evidence?


All these are vital questions for the whole discussion, and what the answers are reflect upon the person answering just as much as the potential targets...

[Tapewolf]

The major point about killing people is what it says about you, not what it says about the people you're killing. While Saddam needs killing, and pretty much everyone will agree with that... who else does? Where do you draw the line? And how do you ensure the line doesn't move, unless you got it wrong? How do you tell that you got it wrong? What do you do if you kill someone who is innocent? How do you prove they're not? How do you live with yourself if you let someone guilty go, through lack of evidence?

Given that execution is a non-reversible process I would err on the side of letting the guilty go free.. if you kill the wrong man you're not only murdering someone who hasn't done anything, but punishing their family and destroying their good name as well.

One of the possible solutions I've dreamed up for those who absolutely must have a death penalty is to carry out the death sentence upon the judge if the condemned man is later found innocent, since they have after all killed an innocent man.  That would force the judge and jury to think very carefully about whether execution is justified.

As it happens I personally don't believe in the death penalty (can you tell?) even for Saddam, although given his track record I'm not exactly going to lose any sleep over it if and when it happens.

[Stygian]

Personally i think death is almost like an easy way out; Saddam won't be rotting in a cell where he is forced to think over the terrible things he did. Also, I agree totally with what Llearch said.

In a way I do agree with you. But this is a much quicker and less costly way. Plus, we kind of get to set an example.

[ninjannihilator]

Life in prison is a more fitting fate. Why not keep him around to see how well Democracy does for Iraq? Why not, in 30 years, show him a more stable and happy society than he could have ever provided? Is that not a greater punishment to a man who was all about ego? I think the easy answer is that Iraq isn't going to change any time soon and Saddam will go out in the same hateful way that has, and will continue to, fuel that area of the world for a long, long time.

Civil war isn't a very happy society. That's what Iraq will be in 30 years from now. There are a lot more tyrants that have killed more people than Saddam. It just surprises me that people actually think Democracy will prevail in Iraq. Church will be very difficult to seperate from state. The new government will abuse of their power and the majority of Iraqis don't want the US military in their country.

[KarlOmega1]

Let's compare this to a case where I'm from...

A guy murdered a University student...the jury had to choose whether he get "Life in prison without bail or parole" or the "death penalty"...they chose "death"...that case I did'nt mind which of the two he got, just as long as they keep him from hurting others.

Now as for Saddam...He killed thousands of innocent lives, which we all know is called "Genocide"! He deserves death!

The way I see it...the lives of Many outweigh the lives of the few...or the one...

Saddam didn't kill one person...he didn't kill a few...he killed thousands!

[Gareeku]

One part of me thinks "good. That bastard deserves all he gets". However, another part of me can't help but think "You know, that's kind of barbaric, not to mention he'll probably be seen as a martyr by the islamic extremists if he's executed." Prison is much more humiliating to the oversized ego he posseses, in my opinion. It would be a much more fitting punishment to utterly humilate the guy, who regards himself as basically some kind of god, as he sits in a little room for the rest of his life, than to be executed and, quite frankly, be going out as hero to the islamic extremists.

[Sid]

The way I see it...the lives of Many outweigh the lives of the few...or the one...

Sorry and no offense to you, but that's bullshit rhetorics in this case.
That line is assuming that his very existence leads to death and decay. How many people would he kill in prison? And even if somehow escaped, how many people would he be able to kill? His empire went down hard. There is little to no chance of simply rebuilding it even if he got out. The initial invasion of Iraq (when he had been in power) had possibly been the smoothest part of the entire war, and it was followed by a long phase of Hussein running away. His empire is GONE. The chances that an old man (who had been hiding in a fricken hole in the ground just before his capture) will rebuild such an empire in current-day Iraq are SLIM at best.

That guy is not an active threat anymore. Not without his empire, and the Army crushed that one pretty well (they didn't manage to "defeat the terror", but that's another story).

Saddam's victims won't come back to life when he dies. And he is extremely unlikely to kill anybody even if they just threw him into a jail cell for the rest of his life.

Now... let's assume that Saddam dies. How many people will see him as a martyr? How many would be willing to die for his cause? How many US soldiers are still in Iraq?

[Netami]

That's just the thing. As it is now, there's a generation of very angry people growing in Iraq. Their fathers and older brothers are being taken away under suspicion of terrorist activities and I feel that Saddam's death, which will most certainly be televised, is only going to incite them and give them a focal point. Not to join any terrorist group, but to join a group of people against this foreign occupation. The only happy people in Iraq are those that belong to the new upper crust we've designated. It's gonna be a long, long time before people live the way we do.

[Distracting]

Killing thousands of innocent people is mass murder, not genocide. Genocide is much worse, but it often gets overlooked, or a large military operation is sent to deal with it (or more to what I'm thinking, bombing them until they quit).

However, murder is generally wrong and even more murder to add to that is worse. To do this...it really kinda shows me how screwed up the world's mindset is.

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

"An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

Zing. The whole argument in one pithy phrase.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Nah, the whole world just wouldn't have any depth perception.

[Distracting]

Nah, the whole world just wouldn't have any depth perception.

Haha...speaking metaphorically, it's not like we have any to start with.

My biggest fear would be that everybody would become pirates or something. Yarr!

[TheGreyRonin]

 Hm. Must add my two cents' worth...

If you have a dangerously insane dog, you put it down. You do not attempt to rehabilitate it, you do not simply lock it away for life to keep it from harming others. You remove it as a threat entirely.

I see no difference in doing so with a person who commits multiple murders, whether as extreme as genocide or simply two or three before he gets caught. A crime of passion can be forgiven; in the heat of the moment, many things that will be later regretted may happen. But someone who takes lives for the simple enjoyment of it will not stop unless forced to. (The fact that I find the thought of changing a person's personality against their will more heinous than a quick death factors in quite a bit.)

Life in prison, in cases like this, are essentially punishing the victims. Someone will have to pay to keep Saddam fed, housed, clothed, etc. Why penalize them for his crimes?

There is also the point of any possible loyalists making a martyr of him after his execution. These are people who willingly strap explosives to their bodies and walk into crowds. What is to stop them from breaking him free in a few years and setting him right back in place?

Slightly off-topic, I agree with DigitalMan on the subject of rape. To me, rape is a worse crime than murder. Ending a life, as terrible as it is, is nothing compared to ruining one through emotional scarring.

Just my opinion. /off soapbox

[Alondro]

Perhaps a compromise?  Make their lives in jail such an unbearable hell that they kill themselves.  *forces them to listen to Ashley Simpson's singing of the national anthem at an auto race... repeated nonstop*  The entire death row would be cleared out in a week.   

[Netami]

Cost is a terrible example of why we should get rid of him quickly. Do you understand how much money we have and will put into the operations in Iraq? The American tax payer has already paid for this war and this is just a piddly expense compared to some of the other things.

Dogs and humans are not the same, but I can understand your connection. Still, psychologically speaking, no one is born evil. Some people are born with certain mental dysfunctions that cause them to feel no empathy, but I somehow doubt that a tyrant like Saddam could rise to where he is unless he had a good grip on how people react of things. These things considered, there had to be some sort of catalyst in his life that caused him to view things the way he did. The disregard for human life is not something programmed into our genes, or at least we havent proven that yet (too busy looking for the gay gene to find the evil one. Perhaps synonymous to some?)

I think that we humans know far too little, either about genetic predisposition to evil or events in Saddam's life that led him to these evil acts, social or religious differences, to say that he should die. It is a quick and easy answer, and easy reparation to those people that feel wronged by him. As someone who took psychology in college and has a father in prison for murder, treading into the territory of punishment is a scary one. If a person is born mentally ill, do you put that dog down? They can still perform well in society, though given enough power and a lack of medication and diagnosis, they can do terrible things. But are they to blame for things they were born with? Are children to blame when their parents beat them and they grow up abnormal? Rape is worse than murder because it is emotionally scarring for the rest of that person's life. What about abuse as a child? Harsh living conditions? These things change people for the worse all the time.

Until some of these things change, I am going to be against the death penalty. A man saying to you with a straight face that he has murdered and will murder again does not necessarily deserve murder himself; there's truth to the matter that you do not know. Children can't choose their parents and you cant choose your genes.

[KarlOmega1]

Um...Evil disposition is not dependant on Genetics...it is dependant on Choice. People choose whether to be good or evil...Good can bring reward...Evil, as it has sooner or later, can bring consequences.

[Gareeku]

Um...you're obviously not taking into the account the fact that maybe Saddam had no choice? What I mean is that he had a pretty fucked up childhood. That can affect your mindstate pretty bad. In his upbringing, there is always the distinct possibility that maybe he didn't view the things he did as evil.

[Cogidubnus]

This conversation can only lead to fail. The question at hand is larger than merely are people responsible for their actions. Is a question of wether or not you believe man is a machine, or a creature of higher thought, capable of responding in spite of the simuli given him. And that is a debate which will offend some.

[Alondro]

The excuse of bad upbringing only works if you ignore all the people who've had terrible lives... and then went on to do good works.  I'm sick of 'society failed them' being used to give murderers a pass.  There are people who've been brought up in ghettos who became doctors, and rich brats with everything who've become killers.  Lawyers always find psychologists willing to play the 'society' trump card, but it falls apart in clinical study.  Indeed, the latest large studies are finding that genes only set a basic pattern for human behavior.

Hitler may have had mental problems, he was almost assuredly addicted to amphetamines taken for what appears to have been Parkinson's... but what about all the thousands of his willing accomplises in the Nazi party?  Did society shape them all?  Did they have Jew-hating genes? 

And what about Oscar Schindler and others who rejected those messages of hate and risked their lives to save all they could?  Mercy genes?  Even so, mercy would be quite against natural instincts for self-preservation. 

Humanity has always been defined by the ability to reject instinctual fears, lest we'd never take the risks we often do for 'fun'.  What purpose does poetry have in a genetic program?  We can decide not to eat to lose weight, or do some extra work.  An animal will eat whenever it feels hungry.  We can decide not to have sex.  An animal will mate when its hormonal cycles dictate. 

Our choices can be based in two segments: either to give in to every impulse we feel, or to make a conscious decision whether we want to do something or not.  True, some people have mental disabilities that limit their cognitive capacity.  But they do not make up the vast majority of the population.  The majority can decide for themselves, they can listen to advise or reject it, they can choose the easy ways or the hard.  They can follow trends or their own path.  Some will lead to destruction, some to mediocrity, some to greatness, some to discovery.  Sometimes we will be hindered, sometimes we will find a path blocked, but it is our decision how to proceed from that point.  How many choices do we consciously make every single day?  How many of us even take the time to think about our own thoughts each day and realize that we are always thinking about our choices? 

At most, in all the rest of the animal kingdom, there may be only three other species that come even remotely close to that level of conscious activity, and the debate as to how much they actually comprehend has been raging for decades. 

I had a choice whether or not to write this.  I thought about how people might respond, and whether or not I will want to respond to the debate that could spring up from this.  I made this choice, and I am still choosing to make this choice, as I could delete this message at any time until I push the 'post' button.  Humans are slaves to instinct only when they choose to surrender their minds to it.  I choose to believe I have choice, thus I see all the choices I can make. 

The famous words come to mind:  I think, therefore I am. 

And I find it insulting that many wish to deny what humanity can do with its choices simply to reduce the sentences for those who've made the choice to commit heinous crimes.  One may be driven to steal to survive, but when you kill, unless you are specifically defending yourself or your loved ones from a killer, or you are suffering from a clearly defined mental disease that impairs your ability to reason, the choice is wholy yours.

[TheGreyRonin]

 Reading the responses after my last post, I thought of several points...

...Which Alondro just covered for me. *grins* I agree. You may not always have good choices, but you always have choices.

[KarlOmega1]

Alondro...You've just made my day...not to mention you've proven my point about choices.

[Gareeku]

Very good points made by Alondro. However, it still doesn't deter from the fact that executing him will probably give him the image of a martyr. Choices or no choices, there are many in the middle east, be it members of terrorist group outside of Iraq or the insurgents in Iraq, would would portray Saddam as a hero, dieing for their cause and thus strengthening their resolve.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

At most, in all the rest of the animal kingdom, there may be only three other species that come even remotely close to that level of conscious activity, and the debate as to how much they actually comprehend has been raging for decades. 

Which three, out of interest?

As for the rest of your post - coherent, logical, and laudable. And far better phrased than anything I coudl come up with in a month of sundays :-)

[Alondro]

There is some fairly strong evidence that elephants, dolphins, and gorillas show empathy and something of an understanding that their actions have consequences.  Gorillas and elephants also demonstrate a mild comprehension of death, at the very least an awareness that something has altered the other life form's state of being But the level of comprehension is likely very basic, in the most advanced instances no more than the comprehension level of the average 4-year old. 

Chimpanzees are actually an interesting example in that they don't really show the same comprehensional empathy as the three other species mentioned.  Whether this has to do with brain structure or social structure is unknown. 

I need to check up on sign-language studies between chimps and gorillas.  Years ago, it looked like gorillas were actually the most language-competent.  I don't know if more research has changed that. Merely being self-aware does not develop language.  If you only know that you are alive and are a 'self', that does not mean you will instantly recognize others as having that same property.  Therefore, language is useless to you because you do not know that information can be given to another living creature with an equivalent mental capacity.  Sapience is vital for language development.  You must be aware that what you are saying or doing can convey information to that individual about yourself and what you may wish that individual to do, plus you must also be able to understand that the creature you are speaking to will have the same capacity as yourself to understand the information you are giving. 

  This is different from mere conditioning, in which an animal knows that a certain stimuli gives a response.  Language comprehension uses abstractions to indicate desire and link them with future actions to be directed by the language.  It is a far higher level of cognition.

Interestingly, this is the very property that leads to anthropomorphism.  Humans are so comfortable with thought and language that the absence of it is almost beyond our comprehension any longer.  Therefore, it comforts us to some degree to think of other animals and objects as having the same cognitive capacity as ourselves.  It brings the unfamiliar non-self state of these creatures and objects closer to a state that is like us, and thus we feel better able to deal with it.  It was thus that before science could provide answers that storms and earthquakes were caused by gods and even the winds had minds of their own in many cultures.  It brought these inexplicable things to a 'human' level.  Is it any surprise, then, that many monsters were less than human?  Monsters, for the most part, tended to be less than human in mind and thought.  The minotaur, the hydra, the werewolf, the dragon... in classical belief, these creatures had little to no intelligence and were feared.  And note also, that in those cultures in which similar creatures were given voices and minds of their own, inevitably they took on sympathetic characteristics.  The kitsune could be good or evil, the Oriental dragons were symbols of luck and mystic power, bringers of rain.   The naga in India were respected and associated with deities. 

Before I get into a multi-page anthropology paper, I'll cut it short by saying that the mind is an amazing thing, something that has somehow managed to take one step above its mere biochemical machinery and expand to take in the whole expanse of the universe while also pondering the tiniest flutter of a quark's frequency.  I could spend years simply learning the limits of my own mind.  Therefore, I think it very foolish to limit humanity simply to fall in line with any particular political leaning.

Oh, and Saddam will only be a martyr to a very small minority.  His regime was far more contemporary in its power base.  He was supported mainly by an elite group and actually alienated the most fundamentaly religious groups in Iraq.  What the US failed to understand was how much fanaticism has grown.  As I've mentioned before, it only takes a tiny minority of the population to keep suicide bombing going for decades.  Children are being taught to kill themselves for Allah from the time they learn to speak (and I must say that in that case, they don't have a choice.  They're never given any opportunity or exposure to anything but hatred.)  I recently saw a documentary showing footage that had been shown on Syrian television over the years.  A little girl of about age three was being asked questions about the Jews.  "What do you think of the Jews?" the reporter asked.  "I want to kill them," she answered.  "Why?" came the next question.  "Because they are pigs and monkies," she replied.  Another image was of a boy of about 6, holding an automatic rifle, shouting that it was his destiny to become a suicide bomber for the glory of Allah and kill the Zionists.

That's what is being bred over there.  These are what the Hitler youth would have been had the program lasted longer.  Assassins brainwashed from birth to obey.  It's the one case where personal choice is destroyed; when every facet of your surroundings is being deliberately directed to shape your every thought and action to what those is control desire.  It's new face of fascism, with a potent religious backing that espouses murder as the most direct way to heaven. 

But, as with Hitler, I fear the world will only realize what it is facing when it's too late.  I don't think America will survive this time.  Americans are furious over a 4 year war with a few thousand dead of our troops.  What would this generation have done in WWII, when 50,000 died in one battle?  When millions died every year?  The Army of the Mahdi, those who desire Armageddon to bring about the return of the 12th Iman are seeking to consolidate their power for the final battle.  At this time, I don't see that the rest of the world will be ready or willing to fight back. 

We have choices, as always.  We can see the pattern in the past and stop it before it grows beyond what it already is, or we can sit back and blindfold ourselves until the unseen knife stabs us in the back.  It is easy to shut the onesself in a closet and deny that the flood is lapping at your door.  But it will not keep the flood from washing you away. 

[Cogidubnus]

And that is a debate which will offend some.

Well, I just got proved wrong. Good show Alondro, I say!

[Netami]

Strange, you say that these people are growing up without choices because people are raising them a certain way. So maybe Saddam wasn't taught as early as six, but one doesn't have to be specifically taught in order to learn. A poor childhood, racial tensions and other factors all end up with him growing up the way he is. You say even then he made choices, well... So will the little girl and the little boy that grew up with nothing but harmful stimuli. It becomes apparent that their choices aren't made from free will and as such are not choices at all; that or our definition of free will needs to be changed. Perhaps they choose of their own free will but they do so out of a very poor reasoning.

If you took the five year old version of me and planted him in an environment that fostered this sort of hatred, I too could have become a suicide bomber. A rapist, a murderer or a wife beater. Compare that 21 year old to this 21 year old and which person is "worth" more? Neither, I would say. Yet one is more worthy of death? I still can't be persuaded to consider killing someone just because they got a bad rap growing up. I still think we can try and learn more about these people rather than killing them. Not stewing them in a jail cell for the rest of their lives, but speaking with them or, if they refuse to cooperate, study their actions and try to learn more about what made them the way they are. 

Of course, you end by saying we have choices, as always. Yet you describe a generation being bred without such things. We're to stop this how, exactly?

[Alondro]

The same way we stopped Nazis from taking over the world.  of course, if you're willing to wait for the full-on assault on Western society, I'll wait too.  It's just going to mean exponentially more death.

And growing up in a society where you're programmed from birth to kill all infidels is utterly different from someone deciding they want to shoot up a school because they got picked on.

I found a specific instance in which a highly fanatical society can remove a person's ability to choose through intense brainwashing.  That does not apply to the average person in jail.

[Netami]

I think that there are a variety of things that stops a person from going through with something. If a kid gets picked on at school and later shoots it up, there's a lot going on there in that choice. Is the child being isolated, in the first place, for something like a mental illness or a racial difference? These things beget violence when they are pressured. Factors like parenting, friendships, religion and the values one puts on morals, these help stop the bullied kid from going through with it. We are, every day and in many ways, tempted to do illegal things to other people. But there are things in place that stop you from taking a bat to that annoying person in the next cubicle, or running down the asshat on the freeway that cut you off.

If a person has all of the factors in the world that would deter (supportive friends and parents, no mental illnesses, a comfortable social standing and the fear of god) and still, with a clear intention and choice decides to shoot up the school, well, even then I would be a little skeptical as to putting that person to the chair. Things don't just happen without a reason, there's always SOMETHING that makes someone do something. I'm not sure we are in a standing of knowledge to determine whether or not someone's actions really deserve the death penalty. Not when there could be a lifetime spent studying them, rehabilitating and hopefully catching these things before they happen again in the future. We are blessed in our society to have the time and resources, the opportunity, to do that sort of thing. A place like the middle east, well, punishment is often dolled out before consideration. An execution in this scenario will just keep the status quo, to the people of Iraq it is just the same barbaric stuff they've been used to for generations and generations of rulership. Only now they've got democracy.

[Alan Garou]

I just hope they do it with dignity. No matter how horrible and monsterous he is, he's still a human being, and deserves to die with dignity.