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The end of Saddam - the beginning of the end?

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

A man with the blood of hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, on his hands. Unrepentant to the end, defiant, assured of his right to torture, gas, and put into meat grinders anyone who disagrees with him, who vigorously exercised that right unparalleled in the history of the late 20th century.

Yet liberals the world over, particularly in Europe, decry the execution of Saddam Hussein.

These misguided souls see no difference between the heinous, unjustified acts of Saddam, and the societal self-defense that was his execution.

They see no difference between initiating an act of violence, and responding to that act.

A proper system of justice exists to ensure that a criminal cannot repeat his acts. The response by society increases in proportion to the potential future threat that criminal poses to society.

The people of Iraq know how dangerous Saddam is, by his history, even if the many Saddam apologists in Europe prefer to bury their heads in the sand. He ruthlessly slaughtered the people he claimed to lead. He never in his entire life expressed a single moment of remorse over these murders. And by this they knew that if it were ever in his power, he would do so again, gladly, and without pause.

For their own self-defense, now and in the future, the only proper response to a man like that, is to permanently end his ability to wreack havoc.

Good riddance, Saddam.

But I fear for Western civilization, whose moral decay has progressed to the point that the right to self-defense, to deal swiftly, harshly, and permanently with psychopaths and death-worshipping criminals, is but a memory. What portent is this, for our culture?

To all you liberals out there who would have kept Saddam alive. What do you say to all his victims, hundreds of thousands of them who had their mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters taken away from them? You ask them to keep him alive, in prison, keep him fed and warm, a roof over his head, entertained with television and books, clothed in the fine suits we always saw him wearing? For his victims to toil, pay taxes to the government, to keep him alive? Is that your justice?

The only valid objection to the death penalty is not that it is "unjust", it is not the moral relativist nonsense that "it lowers us to his level". The death penalty must be applied only sparingly, because we are capable of error. We cannot undo it.

However, if ever there was a case where the crimes and the guilt were perfectly clear, perfectly blatant - this was it. There is no doubt whatsoever that Saddam is a maniacal, murdering sociopath.

Therefore, there is no doubt whatsoever that his final theatrical performance - hanging from the neck until dead - is precisely, and incontrovertibly, the right thing.

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