[en] Saddam sentenced to death

[Webmaster]

does someone kicking human rights be protected by them?
does our point of view be the standard for others?
in mesopotamia it was a common rule: eye for an eye, ...

[catt]

I know. I think the whole thing is totally messed up.

Should someone kicking human rights be protected by them?
Yes. Definitely. Where do you draw the line of 'kicking human rights'? Bullying somebody every day at school? Torturing somebody? Killing somebody? Killing hundreds?
I think you can loose the right to be protected buy human rights but this should be on a personal level: How people view you. However, there should be no objective instance declaring it (e.g. a court decision). This does not mean that you shouldn't be called to account for the things you have done. In Saddams case I think they should just have let him stay in prison for the rest of his life. Of course you can argue that that is a death-sentence too. If we say to somebody 'You no longer deserve to be protected by human rights' we are breaking them ourselves.

Does our point of view be the standard for others?
In Mesopotamia it was a common rule: eye for an eye, ...
Actually, this used (and sometimes still is) our standard too for thousands of years. In fact that is a quote from the Old Testament. The citizens of every country should have the right to decide on their own which morals they'll hold up high. I can't help but thinking that the decision to kill Saddam was at least to some extend influenced by the USA, and thus a western country (which, sadly hasn't really stepped up for human rights lately either).
Probably they'd have killed him even if they had judged totally on their own.

My only concern is this: If your constitution allows for one man to be killed by capital punishment, it potentially opens up the door to kill any citizen by it. The only thing that is important then is a personal measure. I just think that we should draw a certain line which we are not willing to step over. Saddam certainly deserved what he got, but do other people who might face the same do? And this is something that does not only apply to Iraq but to a lot of other countries in the world. And some of them, sadly, are "western" ones.