Ding-dong, the Butcher's dead!

As time has gone on I find that I’ve changed my views about certain verities of life. I’ve become more sensitive in some realms – like the protection of children, for example, or the various and wonderful species of nature, endangered or not. A toddler stumbling across a beach or a park lawn can bring a warm tear to my eye, and I revel looking out at the birds using the feeders I have set up in the back yard.

Likewise, I admire those who do what they can, and then even try to do more to help out their fellow human beings.

At the same time I know I’ve become more hard-nosed about other aspects of life, and I am not ashamed that I have. When I was young, and arguably more idealistic than I am today, I was an avowed pacifist and was also (heatedly sometimes, especially when arguing with my elders) stridently opposed to capital punishment. To me there was no justification for taking another human's life, regardless of the heinousness of his or her crimes. I just believed we did not have the right to take a life.

Over time I changed. I think the change came about around the time I read Ann Rule’s book The Stranger Beside Me, which is her sometimes chilling account of once having worked next to serial-killer Ted Bundy at a Seattle crisis centre. Then, consummate crime-writer that Rule is, she went on to recount the pretty-boy psycho’s sadistic brutalisation and murder of what ultimately was probably scores of young women in Washington State, Utah and eventually Florida. So, after they caught Bundy, and when the time came for them to fry him, I rejoiced at the news. I also secretly hoped he suffered agonies of fear and much physical distress. Maybe something to just vaguely equal the horrors he’d perpetrated on his victims. Of course, considering what he'd done, no system of criminal justice could come close to meting out genuinely appropriate punishment. But, for me, “fry the bastard,” sat well.

So, did I shed a tear today when I heard Saddam Hussein had been hanged? I did not. I didn’t rejoice either. What I felt was a sort of neutrality in my soul and a kind of world-weariness. In other words, he’s gone and if ever a man deserved to be hanged, it was he. At the same time the realization came to me that somehow it wasn’t enough. Mere hanging couldn’t come close to sufficient punishment for the horrors he’d imposed on thousands upon thousands of people. Thousands upon thousands that weren’t even granted a trial, like he was. So, how can we find punishment sufficient to deal with such a reptile? Even if a Ted Bundy could have sat in the gas chamber for a year, choking and gasping, it wouldn’t and couldn't make up for the horrors he’d imposed on the friends and families of his victims. If they'd caught Hitler in 1945, what could they have done to him that would have been enough?

But, I’m glad that Saddam and I no longer suck the same air on this planet. I am glad he can now pathetically attempt to make peace with Allah. I don’t think he’ll succeed. I love the scene in the movie Ghost where the bad guy is hit by a car and killed and the dark underworld shapes come up and drag his horrified soul down the manhole and into the netherworld. I hope Saddam Hussein is in the same place.

Regardless of your feelings about the Iraq War – and we all have feelings about it – there are very few, even in the Islamic world that believed that Saddam Hussein had a right to live. I shared such thoughts and feel no shame whatsoever about feeling that way.