I’ve just finished reading The Other Boleyn Girl, an account of the court of Henry VIII. It turned out to be a curiously appropriate time to be reading it. Labyrinthine politics, imperialist intrigue and summary executions, the players taking turn and turnabout on one merry-go-round as winners and losers in ruinous games of their own devising. We haven’t come very far in five hundred years. A killing is still required to be righted by another. You can still be sent to the scaffold for your crimes and it can still be ordered to be done in haste. And it’s still a public execution in front of an avid, jeering crowd.
There are colourless things living at the bottom of ponds that learn quicker.
2 comments:
Here's my somewhat simplistic view:
1. The death sentence has never been a deterrent for murder; human history itself evidence.
2. But it's an excellent deterrent of the murderer himself. Saddam will never kill again.
Conditional of course to whether you have 'proof' of 'malfeasence' (spelling)........
I suppose in Saddam's case the proof of whatsit (see what I did there?) is not a problem!
My quarrel, as you've understood, is not with the punishing of Saddam, it's with the death sentence. But point 2 has a point :)
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