Just watched the Sadam hanging video for the first time (uncut) and it really bothers me. What does that mean

Question

Does that mean that I am against capital punishment? I always thought I was for it, but I had never seen an execution before.

I weep for the people that Sadam terrorized, but I feel bad that he was hanged. I saw the fear in his face and unexpectedly teared up.

Is that an odd? I feel un-American or something.

I didn't watch mass media or listen to the pundits when this issue was ripe, so I do not know the general reacton. But I do recall a general sense of accomplishment when he was executed. As if it was in the name of America.

I'm sorry if this is so late. But I really didn''t follow this sort of thing back when it happened.

Answer 1

Saddam was a ruthless killer, also know as the butcher of Baghdad. He wiped out entire villages with mustard gas, blood agents and nerve gas. He allowed his sons to run rape rooms where new brides we taken and raped and then brought back to their husbands. Saddam faced death the same way those he killed faced it, with terror. Saddam was not killed in the name of America. He was tried by his people and executed by his people in the name of justice.

It is not wrong to feel odd out seeing an execution, that just means you are human. Saddam got what he deserved.

Answer 2

It means you're just one of the mindless millions of Americans who depend on the media/government "news-&-views" as the gospel truth. Very American.

Answer 3

Rather odd as Saddam never threatened the US and was a US ally for years and even fought a war against Iran (at great sacrifice) for the US.

Saddam was brutal in order to preserve securuty from those ethnic groups who tried to terrorise the rest of Iraq.

Saddam brought relative domestic peace (through threats of intimidation and fear) to a country previously torn by ethnic divide, he achieved something at which the US has spectacularly failed.

Saddam also provided schooling and a quality healthcare system for all Iraqis (previously only the preserve of the very few rich).  He grew up poor and illiterate and was fortunate in one day receiving education and further studying law.

There is no doubt that his motivation was greed for power (and the trappings of wealth) but he did free his country from the decades of colonial influence and the continued violence that ensued in the power vacum that followed.

Looking at media tday you would not imagine that Saddam was once the friend of the West in the middle East.

His great mistake was to take up the plight of the oppressed Palestinians and to send them millions $ in aid for food, water and power, (some of this money diverted to weapons), this of course made an enemy of Israel and with America currently fighting Israel's war by proxy, his fate was sealed.

His failings were that he did not restrict his general's punishment of enthnic regional populations and he did not punish or keep a tight reign on one of his sons (who behaved like an animal) this made him hated by many.

That said he did keep his country from civil war for a period of over two decades and he did halt the spread of the Iranian Shia Islamic revolution outside the borders of Iran (therefore securing western oil interests in the middle east).

If you feel bad it could be your conscience telling you that it is wrong to execute anyone, in Europe we don't execute anymore because we feel that there is no place for such barbarity in a civilized society.

The number of countries that still execute is fortunately on the wane but violence is I feel too deeply engrained in US culture for the practice of state execution to change.

As many Americans do, you are free to act on your conscience, it doesn't make you un-American but it may remind you that you are human and that there may after all be a better way. God bless.

Answer 4

I understand how you feel.  Watching an execution (or for that matter, watching anyone who dies regardless of type of death) is depressing, if not agonizing.  Executions by hanging, electric chair, gas, firing squad or lethal injection are not pleasant and not meant to cheer one up, even the executioner.  Saddam's death was totally undignified and in public, more or less.  Almost everyone who has moral standards, or are Judeo-Christian, feel  the same way  you do.  Most of us are repulsed by death, even if we see it in a hospital room, or observe the euthanasia of our pet dog at the veterinarian's clinic.  We see life every day and don't understand death by another's hand.  You are feeling what people felt for thousands of years and you will just have to accept it and endure it.  Remember, the Greeks had their gods because they could not accept the immortality of mankind, and today we have religions that assure us death is not permanent because we have a soul.  I hope you do feel better.

Answer 5

Although Hussein certainly deserved death, and was sentenced by a court of law; the actual execution was an undignified travesty.  It should have been done with the proper order, gravity and solemnity such a process deserves.

Answer 6

no it does not make you un american.  death itself is an emotional and painful experience for many people.  if any good at all can come from his execution let it be to remind everyone how aweful it was haveing a man like that in power and the horrible things he did to his own contrymen, the fact that he killed so many, in brutal and unspeakable ways does not lessen the fact that watching him die was not pleasant.  you would need to worry if you enjoyed it, or were not bothered by it..  then you would have been no better than he was....

Answer 7

Your sad b/c you saw a person take his last breath and then watch a life get snuffed out someone blowing out a candle.

No you're not un-American for feeling that way.

Your just a person having one of several normal reactions.