It’s a good thing that some of the humans in America are not ordinary, isn’t it.

Justice is giving someone what they deserve, no more, no less. Saddam doesn’t deserve the rights of a normal Iraqi, that he witheld from everyone he didn’t like. Saddam simply deserves to be defeated on a level playing field.

To give Saddam human rights is an injustice. TO give him a fair trial, where both sides have equal firepower, that is justice.

It would not be justice if Saddam’s lawyer was better than the Iraqis. It would not be justice if Saddam had more rights than his victims. Saddam has the right to live or die based upon the decisions of those more powerful than him, exactly the choice he gave to his victims.

We in the west, fallen to the state of decadent order, no longer have a system where each side is even in a trial. It is increasingly becoming uneven. Unbalanced and unstable.

Perhaps a new justice system, in Iraq, may be more vibrant and balanced.

If you follow media issues, you’ll find the interview interesting; if you’re right wing, you’ll find the interview illuminating; if you’ve gone tribal, you’ll callously dismiss the interview rather than check it out.

Peace.

Robert Fisk: War is the “Total Failure of the Human Spirit”

Peace.

We agree that Hitler’s evil “should” not be a part of the human condition, but I think it was, is, and will be. All we can do, IMHO, is try and identify and stop it before the copses pile up again.
That is also why I understand the current German attitude –they’ve come from the Jewish “never again” after the Holocaust to their own “never again” to militarism and violence. It may be foolish, when faced with Islamofascism, and even self-destructive, but I see why the pendulum has gone from the old extreme to the new one. Maybe it will swing to an enlightened middle soon.

That said, there are men that are so evil, so depraved, that any attempt draw parallels from their ‘humaness’ to our own, is a best, a questionable effort.

Hitler’s closest familial descendants- some of whom live here, in the US, have chosen not to have children. They wish the family line to die out. These are not evil men- they are however, haunted and burdened- tragically- with an incredible evil. They are perhaps, an extraordinary answer to Hitler’s legacy- they have decided that there is some evil that cannot be rehabilitated.

Theirs is an extraordinary display of nobility- these blameless men have taken it upon themselves to bury that evil, once and for all. As Hitler is rightfully despised, these men ought rightfully be admired.

Was Adolph Hitler ‘human’? Yes, he was. That however, does not mean he was part of human community- and knowing that he loved his dog and was pleasant to his secretary does not- and should not- make his evil any part of the human condition.

The “recent film” that you say “wanted to humanize Hitler,” was “Der Untergang,” and the makers of it understand something you seem not to: Hitler was human. There is no need to “humanize.” Human beings have done the evil he did, still commit it, and are likely to continue.
Precisely because Germans saw him as more than human, as a “psychic god,” did they happily succumb to his appeal, touching in them the need to be led by a force greater than the weak and muddled human ones.
The film showed him being kind to his secretaries, attentive to his dog and loyal to his flunkies. But he was all that, and cold, vicious, genocidal at the same time.
Read “Ordinary Men” by Robert Browning, the account of German policemen who carried out executions of Jews on the Eastern front. Ordinary human beings are capable of “absolute evil.”

Hitler could be kind to his secretaries, attentive to his dog, loyal to his flunkies, all while approving the extermination of millions.

I am reminded of the recent film that wanted to ‘humanize’ Hitler.

Evil is absolutely evil- and that is a lesson that Iraq the Model reminds his readers.

We need to give Saddam some kind of due process, if for no other reason than to prove to ourselves that the rule of law is an integral part of of we are. Still, we- and every victim of Saddam, all know the necessary outcome.

Sometimes, the seven cent solution- the cost of a bullet, is indeed justice.

Absolutes are anathema to the NYT. Absolutes limit what are the boundries of morality- an idea and principle the NYT cannot abide- because absolutes remove their unquestioned authority and what they believe is their sacred right to set those moral boundries.

Peace.

BG