The Death Penalty; that bleeding wound of humanity

Although it may have seemed a standard execution conducted by the D’awa Party at a signal coming from the occupiers; the real issue behind the pre-politically-dead Saddam and his gallows is not about justice, or about the ancient Hammurabi codes, or even about a mere sects/tribal vendetta; the real social-recursive, termite-gnawing dilemma is the Death Penalty.

One of the common denominators that Pre-2003 Iraq had shared with our primary occupiers (besides a joint loath for the Iranians and the inclination towards the Wahhabis – capitalists Takfiris) is the capital punishment, and it was for laws as such that the illegal war on Iraq was daftly considered doable.

Let’s make on thing clear that is with respects to Saddam, justice could have only be served if he were left alive to witness, behind bars, the great heroism of the Iraqi nation - of only three colors and stars - to go through the peaceful process of a Greek-Mesopotamian democratization. Of course, for the obvious reasons none of the aforementioned was perceived and instead we have a deja uv Victorian colonialism /internecine sects to rampage our civilities.

Our occupiers have a long lasting experience with the death penalty (Rites of Terror) as a forfeit and a deterrent to their civic crimes (approx 35,000/annual violence related deaths) and they could be considered masters in staging controversial executions – whether in digital colored images on major networks or in flimsy 1930’s black & white, as long as the end result bears its fruits; and this time the outcome amounted to a larger division amongst the ‘victimized’ Iraqis.

The very basic of Rites of Passage is Spontaneous Communitas which calls for a quality of relatedness to rise in egalitarian situation amongst those who intersect in an event that generates high emotions. This is the very foundation of humanity that helps to construe its textures and what makes it survive in the ever-changing life circumstances. The outcome of the Spontaneous Communitas is a post liminal stage through which people diverge/converge into clusters to form separate egalitarian models.

The hanging of the Saddam on the first ritual day of religious festivities – when myths, fears, etc are at highest echelon, will produce a ritual ‘sacrificial’ victim for those who deem Saddam is turned into a martyr, and ritual ‘sacrificeacble’ victim for those who deem Saddam is a punishable murderer. And no one will ever escape these reflexive thoughts, as both violence and ‘scaredism’ are universal.

“In many rituals the sacrificial acts assumes two opposing aspects, appearing at times as sacred obligation (Saddam is a death-punishable murderer)…, at other times a sort of criminal activity entailing perils of equal gravity (Saddam is a martyr)” (Girard, 1992)

Those two head-on colliding emotions will form the core of the arising ideologies in anti-structural situations (a Shiites – Sunnis collision!)

Conversely, once the sacrificial subject (Saddam) is turned into a neophyte (post-liminality) during the process of the judicial system. His rejection to the world of the new structure will trigger a classic separation from that same world by submitting himself to renunciation and the submission to the ‘divine’. Becoming more like gods, he refused to acknowledge the new social order and became nihilistic, and as with the ‘Heaven’s Gate’ members he had eventually committed suicide while he was reciting ritual verses during the act.

Therefore, the Death Penalty has become a ritual act within Rites of Terror rather than punishment within a civilized social order, while the criminal commits a ritual suicide amidst human divergence.

Humanity has suffered tremendously from the Death Penalty. And superpowers like China and the USA are still using it as a tool to accommodate the masses rather than doing justice by implying that the punishment served the cause. In reality no death punishment could serve a cause unless the criminal renounces his divinity.