Execution

[singlemalt]

Saddam Hussein will be executed within hours. An Iraqi court decided his fate. The execution will be conducted by Iraqi citizens. It will be videotaped.

You have the floor.

[Doreen Peri]

OMG... i didn't know this!

this is so barbaric!

[stilltrucking]

Same shit
different day

Amazon.com: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of ...Amazon.com: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil: Books: Hannah Arendt by Hannah Arendt.
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusale ... 0140187650 - 143k - Cached - Similar pages

[firsty]

he's dead.

yay death.

long live death.

[e_dog]

saddam was a bad guy no doubt. evil, even, maybe.

but he was not eichman, nor was he of the mold of 'banal' evil. eichman was a calculating bureaucrat, Saddam a cunning dictator. the Nazis murdered millions, the Baath party perhaps several ten thousand? how does one compare crimes against humanity?

lets just hope that Bush will stand trial for his crimes in turn. not likely that his administration will really take heat now that they've shut up one who could've done a better job at implicating e.g. rumsfeld who was saddam's accomplice.

[stilltrucking]

I suppose I should have made my point more clear. I was thinking about the "fairness of the trail."

Fudging the distinction between evil acts and "Evil" is one of the reasons for the flaws of the Hussein trial. It was the same for the Eichmann trial almost half a century ago and the term "banality of evil," the provocative subtitle of Hannah Arendt' s report on that trial for the New Yorker, points precisely to this problem. A German-Jewish political thinker and a refugee from the Hitler regime, she would have celebrated her hundredth birthday just about the time of the verdict in the first Hussein trial: death by hanging. She would probably have agreed with the punishment but would have had reservations about the trial's success in documenting and defining his guilt -- as she had in the case of the Eichmann trial. The connection between the trials does not end here since "Nazi Evil" has been an important polarizing motor in both of them. One of Arendt's first observations in her new country was that here one could be an American and a Jew, namely that different cultural and religious traditions did not have to mean different social values and political divisiveness. And yet, Eichmann in Jerusalem, the book Americans today associate most with her name, caused a storm of furious objections in the early Sixties. Almost half a century later, Arendt is still persona non-grata for a majority of American Jews and Israelis.

In Hussein's case, though, the situation is more complicated and divisive because the reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq have been so muddled and the legitimacy of the court that sentenced him questionable -- as was that of the court that sentenced Eichmann in Jerusalem. Among other things, the secular court that tried Hussein was under political pressure to honor the American president's declared conviction that Hussein's execution will stabilize the new Iraq since it will demonstrate the absolute victory of Good, in the guise of Iraqi democracy, over Evil, represented by Hussein's totalitarian rule.2

http://hnn.us/articles/32918.html

[e_dog]

first, i doubt a "majority" of American or Israeli Jews even know who Hannah Arendt was, let alone regard her with animosity. True, there are some people who dislike her work for various reasons -- mostly a failure to appreciate her absolute brilliance -- but she enjoys as much or more popularity in the States and in the holy land as any philosopher can e'er hope to.

the two cases are only superficially similar. the problem w/ eichman trial was that the Israeli secret forces abducted him in violation of Argentine sovereignty, etc. etc. The Saddam trial court was a standard victor's justice game combined with partisan vengeance and, given the strange tendency of defense lawyers to get murdered during the trial recesses, it lacked even the semblence of the due process that the apologists of the execution and the puppet regime have now touted as the trial's manifested justice.

personally i got no problem with trying dictators and other political leaders as war criminals -- just you gotta include the whole lot of 'em, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ronnie Reagan, Bushes I and II. put these fuckers on trial, too. let justice prevail, if they so confident in they causes -- it's said that Harry T. never lost a night's sleep over Hiroshima n Nagasaki (some people lose sleep over whether they under-tipped the waiter, or whether they should have said 'i love you' to grand-dad, this guy nukes hundreds of thousands of persons and doesn't lose sleep! -- say what you will about difficult executive decisionmaking but that strikes me as, well, rather sociopathic) -- they ought to be able to defend theyselves in court.

Since that will and could never happen, the idea of justice for dictators is a sham. Bush is arguably a graver criminal than Saddam, who while he committed terrible crimes, never threatened the entire globe as Bush has done in recent years.

Bush has already killed far more people than Bin Laden by the way. No doubt Bin Laden is one of the worst criminals of our time, but not nearly as dangerous as Bush is.

[Dave The Dov]

If both sides kill that many people then they should both be criminals.
_________________
Honda Wave series

[stilltrucking]

kind of a vicious circle dave
kill the killers
makes us killers too?

I don't agree with everything in that article e-dog, just my laziness. I was trying to make a point about the trial and I used it to make my point.

Another thing I don't agree with is the statement that she would have approved the punishment.


I read that book so long ago, thirty years at least. I don't remember much about it except she thought the trial was a farce
<><><<>><><><><><>><>>><><><><>>
On an unrelated impertinent personal note:
Her relationship with Heidegger seems so werd to me.
I suppose Sylvia Plath was right.

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you. Daddy

Book on Arendt Stirs Debate over Her Legacy (Nov '95)Most scholars believed that by the 1930s Arendt and Heidegger had gone their ... Most disturbing to some scholars after the war, Arendt and Heidegger ...

Cut and Paste:

One of the gossipy curiosities of 20th-century philosophy is that Hannah Arendt, the German-born Jewish philosopher remembered for her fierce and unforgiving attacks on totalitarianism, had a youthful fling in the 1920s with Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger, the influential philosopher, later became a prominent Nazi and at one time aspired to be Hitler s chief ideologue.

Most scholars believed that by the 1930s Arendt and Heidegger had gone their separate ways and their early liaison could be dismissed as a short- lived dalliance.

But now a book based on their newly unsealed correspondence, "Hannah Arendt/Martin Heidegger" (Yale University Press) by Elzbieta Ettinger, has revealed that their affair was not evanescent but burned with white hot intensity for four years. Most disturbing to some scholars after the war, Arendt and Heidegger resumed their friendship.

And Arendt, whose fiery reproach had extended to European Jews whom she said had "collaborated" with the Nazis in their own destruction, did almost everything she could to whitewash the unrepentant Heidegger, who had succeeded in banning Jewish professors from the University of Freiburg, which he led from 1933 to 1934.

"She devoted herself to popularizing his philosophy in the United States and to vindicating his name in the eyes of his critics," wrote Professor Ettinger.

The revelations have stirred one of the most heated scholarly debates in recent memory, taking hold in publications and planned seminars that raise such issues as the extent to which influential thinkers should be judged by their private acts.

"The book shows that Arendt was so arrogant that she thought she alone could decide who should be forgiven and who should not," said Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who has written of his experiences in the Auschwitz death camp. "I'm not so sure her moral stature will remain intact."
www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/arendt.html - 12k - Cached - Similar pages

[Arcadia]

I saw the execution images yesterday on tv.
I'm not for executions.

[abcrystcats]

Stilltrucking, in a search for some information about Hitler, I just discovered HNN and registered there. I also responded to the article you just quoted, then came here in search of some response to the execution of Saddam Hussein.

I haven't read Hannah Arendt's book, but now I'm interested.

Just a visceral reaction to the execution (not very much related to the above) -- I saw his picture as he was being led away, and I read the article on MSN about his hanging and pathetically ridiculous last words -- and I felt sorry for him.

I've spent the last two days wondering how I can feel that way, then I realized that's part of the secret. Feeling pity for those who don't deserve pity is one of the higher (not the lower) talents of the human race. I can deplore this man's acts and call them Evil, and yet still recognize that he is part of humanity .... "if you prick us, do we not bleed?" does not just apply to Jews, but also to the most despicable criminals imaginable.

What I got out of the Barnouw article was that the danger is in polarizing and politicizing concepts of Good and Evil. It's the Us/Them ideology that makes it possible for evil acts to occur in the first place.

If I could have the attitude: "Oh, it's only Saddam, that evil criminal. Good riddance to that piece of inhuman trash!" I'd be a lot closer to his level. Ironically, in identifying with him and feeling compassion, I am a lot farther away.

The whole message of the Holocaust, in my opinion, is to never forget that human beings were capable of doing this to other human beings in the name of Good. It isn't to never forget the victimhood of the Jews, or the Great Evil of the Perpetrators. It is to remember that we are ALL capable of being the perpetrators, as we are all capable of being victims. The Holocaust has been too politicized and we tend to forget that the Jews could have been any group anywhere, at any time there was hate in the human heart (and when is there not?).

Been reading a biography of Hitler, and so far, what shocks me the most is how HUMAN he seems and how ordinary in the emotional sense. He does not appear crazy, psychopathic or even (for a leader) particularly neurotic. He was also totally sold on his own beliefs. He didn't carry out the Final Solution as great plot to harm the human race. He thought he was doing GOOD. That's what's truly horrible and frightening to me. If Hitler could do that, then any one of us is also capable ....

[mnaz]

Good post, Laurie. Much wisdom here. Jesus-like wisdom.

He was also totally sold on his own beliefs. He didn't carry out the Final Solution as a great plot to harm the human race. He thought he was doing GOOD.

This sounds eerily familiar to present-day DC politics.

That's what's truly horrible and frightening to me. If Hitler could do that, then any one of us is also capable..

I'm not sure of that. But I'll tell you what horrifies and frightens me... the ease with which such a plague can spread through the millions-- how the world's most powerful extremists can exploit the fear and/or hatred of "the masses", often with little more than heated and/or ominous rhetoric.

[abcrystcats]

I don't know about "Jesus-like."

What freaks me out is reading about this man, Hitler, and realizing that he was so much like the rest of us in so many important ways. We are fond of calling him crazy, but I am up to 1935 in this book and I don't see "crazy" yet. I see wrong. I see evil being done, but I don't see crazy ....

Yeah it does sound like some of our present politics -- in more ways than one.

I am sure of it -- and the proof is that millions colluded with Hitler, agreed with him and so on. He was a catalyst but he had plenty of willing supporters. And it isn't a "plague." I disown words that make it sound as if evil acts are the result of an accident or a virus or being a mere follower. They are not. The are the result of a conscious human will to act. Like the song says, "The Killer Is Me." No kidding. In search for any vital message from the Holocaust, this one seems the most apt.

There really isn't any such beast as "the Masses." When you break it down, it's individuals who point guns and shoot people, who torture them and enslave and humiliate.

[e_dog]

"The book shows that Arendt was so arrogant that she thought she alone could decide who should be forgiven and who should not," said Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who has written of his experiences in the Auschwitz death camp. "I'm not so sure her moral stature will remain intact."

well, at least the Nobel committee has appointed Elie Wiesel to decide on who should and shouldn't be forgiven for their immoral stature, instead.

It's a bit inaccurate to say the Arendt tried to popularize Heideger's philosophy. her 1945 or '46 piece in the Partisan Review on Existenz Philosophy remains one of the most trenchant critiques of Heidegger in print.

So, she had a weakness for her old flame and was willing to withhold judgment against her own understanding of morality and history.

It would be a strange way to repudiate fascism if personal loyalties were to be invariably sacrificed to political truth. this isn't to justify her let alone Heideger but simply to say, cut her some slack; those who want to villify her don't really give a shit whether she should say sorry for fucking-Heidegger-and-liking-it, rather they are afraid of her criticisms of modern political society.

[e_dog]

abcrystcats,


you wrote:

"Been reading a biography of Hitler, and so far, what shocks me the most is how HUMAN he seems and how ordinary in the emotional sense. He does not appear crazy, psychopathic or even (for a leader) particularly neurotic. He was also totally sold on his own beliefs. He didn't carry out the Final Solution as great plot to harm the human race. He thought he was doing GOOD. That's what's truly horrible and frightening to me. If Hitler could do that, then any one of us is also capable ...."

yes, aside from the desire to murder milions of persons, and to rule the world as a dictator with a cult following, having an obessive hatred of Jews and other groups, he doesn't seem "crazy" or "psychopathic" at all. what, exactly, would it take for someone to appear psychopathic, then? other than ... oh, i don't know, for example, thinking that by murdering millions of people you were doing "GOOD"?

I don't know what biography you were reading, but if that is the impression you've gotten, that Hitler is just a normal guy, then i think that's probably not the best piece of writing.

also:

"What I got out of the Barnouw article was that the danger is in polarizing and politicizing concepts of Good and Evil. It's the Us/Them ideology that makes it possible for evil acts to occur in the first place. "

can't we all just get along? we certainly don't want to "politicize" anything, that might require taking a stand against something or someone.

the truth is, Evil does exist. Hitler was evil. George Bush is evil (though not nearly as evil as Hitler, of course). Dick Cheney is evil. am i being to "polarizing"? You bet -- any one who supports the Republicans is the enemy and must be nonviolently, but politically, denounced as -- not necessarily evil but at least -- misguided and wrong on politics.