Unsettled

... and unsure why.

Saddam Hussein was just executed. Listen, I'm not someone who thinks that the man is innocent or shouldn't be punished--he was an awful dictator who kept his people in constant fear through mass kilings and torture. Iraq wasn't more peaceful before the US invasion because of some goodwill on his part, but because it was a police state. I don't agree with what the United States has done by going into Iraq, but that's not because I think the Iraqis were better off under Hussein. I just don't think what they have now is any better.

But something about a hanging (or pictures of a man about to be hanged) unsettles me. I have a gut reaction to it--an emotional, visceral, negative reaction. I don't see how hanging someone, even a mass murderer, makes anything better. Is the world composed of living energies and now that his evil is dead, we're all fine and balanced now? I don't believe that or any other argument for executions... I think that capitol punishment is simply our base need for revenge and violence institutionalized in order to make it seem rational and logical... not to mention legal.

But then I think about the scope of someone like Hitler or Pol Pot's crimes... or someone who were to hurt my family... and a blazing anger rises up. I clench my fists and think about how I can hurt them. Or if someone were to attack me, how I would fight back so that they would never hurt again... Is that anger the same feeling that justifies (and would one day lead me to condone) a hanging or lethal injection?

I don't know, I guess that a situation like Hussein's brings gut reactions out of all of us and our individual natures move us towards one view or the other. I wholeheartedly believe that people feel what they feel sans thought. We use words and rational to create "reasons" that help us feel above our nature and justify our "illogical" emotions. So which is more telling to my true feelings: my small moment of rage at the thought of someone hurting my family or my complete disgust when looking at the picture of someone (even as detestable as Hussein) hanging? I'd like to think the latter and that my life-long reasons for being anti-capitol punishment and war are justifications for my innate aversion to the taking of any life for any reason.*

I just hope that I never have a situation where my family is hurt and I have to test this theory. And that we can change our society and world enough where we stop allowing dictators like Hussein to prosper... then we won't have to justify hanging them later for crimes we tacitly allowed them to commit.

*I know, I know, I'm pro-choice... doesn't that throw a wrench in this whole thing, you ask? Personally I'd rather leave that argument for another day, k? I'm being a little too philosophical and introspective for noon on a Saturday as it is.