Politics
How Quickly They Forget, or, What’s Italian for “Hypocrite”?
by Clay Staggs
Great Observation from the guys at Powerline this morning. I can’t add to this (aside from perhaps wondering how the UN can do anything like a global ban on anything), so I’ll simply copy and paste:
Posted by Clay Staggs at January 3, 2007 01:58 PMCNN Europe reports that Italians are shocked—shocked!—by the cell phone video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, and are calling for a United Nations ban on all capital punishment:
Italy will campaign at the United Nations for a global ban on the death penalty, Prime Minister Romano Prodi said on Tuesday, after graphic images of Saddam Hussein’s hanging shocked people around the world.Italian politicians of all political parties expressed disgust at Hussein’s execution, with even former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi calling it a “political and historic error.”
Pressured by a week-long hunger strike by a 76-year-old campaigner against Hussein’s execution and the death penalty in general, Prodi said Italy would push the U.N. for a “universal moratorium” on capital punishment.
Iraq’s government made the obvious rejoinder:
The Iraqi government has hit back at Italy for its criticism of Hussein’s execution, accusing it of hypocrisy, especially after World War Two dictator Benito Mussolini was killed by partisans and hanged upside down in a Milan square in 1945.“They have no right interfering in the affairs of another country,” government official, Yaseen Majeed, was quoted as saying in La Repubblica daily. “Mussolini’s trial only lasted one minute.”
Speaking as someone who has seen both video of Saddam’s hanging, as well as video of some of the results of his dictatorship, I can tell you which was far more graphic and far more disturbing to me. I’m not at all surprised by this, but I wonder if the world might be better off if they would call for a ban on blood thirsty dictators (like Hussein was) rather than a ban on capital punishment. Instead, these people are in favor of the Neville Chamberlain method of dealing with dictators—which as we all know (but some have apparently completely forgotten) didn’t work out too well, now did it?