And So It Goes: Possible Reasons to Care About Saddam Hussein’s Execution
posted by Deven Desai
Dan’s post asks whether we should care. This morning I was reading arguments regarding whether the United States could or should hand Saddam Hussein over to the Iraqi government because of international law concerns. The New York Times reports that news agencies have been debating whether to show the event. Now CNN reports he is dead. As I watch CNN and write this brief post Anderson Cooper notes that the execution was videotaped and photographed and that CNN will review this media possibly to show it but with some warning regarding the contents before it runs the footage.
Perhaps the reason to care is precisely the sense that Dan offers: even when we might not care about the specific person and “the intentional killing of another human being [does] not generate deep discomfort” — maybe especially at that point — we should care and look to the questions of justice that we otherwise would consider. Isn’t this in part what Arendt is addressing in Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil?
In other words, maybe we should slow down and see how we treat even the most extreme criminals rather than rapidly move from debates about international law to whether we should show or not show the execution not to mention indulging in the voyeurisitc reports of each moment before, during, and after the execution.
Then again to borrow a phrase from Vonnegut, and so it goes.
PS For those wishing to read the 298 opinion it is available at the Case Western Law Web site.
December 30, 2006 at 12:01 am
Posted in: Capital Punishment
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Responses (3)
Jeff Lipshaw - December 30, 2006 at 4:53 pm
Deven, I don’t think Hannah Arendt’s concern in Eichmann in Jerusalem was particularly for Eichmann as the victim of an execution, if I read your comment correctly. The banality she observes is not the banality of attitudes toward the execution of the criminal, but the banality of Eichmann’s own “crime.” Eichmann portrayed himself as a somewhat cloddish, efficiency-seeking, ladder-climbing bureaucrat whose job was to make sure that the trains, carrying their human cargo, got from here to there on time. In short, the focus of our concern about banality should be the evil inflicted on the innocent by the banal, not the media moment of a non-banal infliction of a cruelty on the horrifically guilty.
Vickie Pynchon - December 31, 2006 at 1:43 pm
If we reach a point where “the intentional killing of another human being [does] not generate deep discomfort” we are in deep moral trouble. See the comment on Saddam’s execution on the Mediators without Borders Blog at http://mwoborders.blogspot.com
Deven Desai - December 31, 2006 at 5:00 pm
Jeff,
If I remember correctly the opening and other sections of the book warn of the banality of evil in the way the trial was run and in the description of the trial itself. In addition, although I do not have the book in front of me, I think the plodding was what Arendt highlights whereas Eichmann tied to claim that he was doing his duty and following the law. Nonetheless the rather sanitized and bureaucratic aspects of his acts are part of the point.
As such I believe that the idea of banality Arendt addresses cuts both ways: the ability to be banal in the infliction of harm on innocents as well as the way a justice system can edge towards that same banality when administering justice even in a trial setting.
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