Saturday, December 30, 2006

Celebrating the Death of a Dictator

If there’s one thing you can say
About Mankind
There’s nothing kind about man
Tom Waits/Kathleen Brennan, song writers, from the song "Misery is the River of the World"

I find all the delectation people are exhibiting and the news media’s breathless repetition of Saddam Hussein’s death as well as the eagerness to show the corpse leaves me with a sense of unease.

The Iraqis celebrating in Illinois and those brave enough to go outside in Iraq all seems rather barbaric. The hundreds killed by Hussein, his sons or his lynch men are not brought back, the suffering felt by the families is not lessened, there is not even closure because the pain will always be there.

The celebration of a death penalty executed shows humanity at its most abject.

2 comments:

Trish said...

I thought the same thing last night when the CNN vultures were circling, waiting on the news that he was executed.

Chandira said...

Yes. Which is partly why I never gave the thing any blog space. Morbid and alarmingly inhuman.

But I guess that's what CNN and any news media is built of, death sells. I think the witch hangings in England during the middle ages were always well attended. We've obviously evolved in the last 500 years.