Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead, or In Memory of Justice
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!
I suppose if I had lost half my family to Saddam Hussein, Friday night would have been cause for celebration. So maybe I would have joined the revellers in the streets of Dearborn and Baghdad who were in the mortifying throes of retribution rock.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!
Or is she?
The Wicked Witch of the West lives on. Indeed, Saddam took his last few breaths at one of her military bases. So much for his execution being the act--or convincing demonstration--of a free and independent Iraq. No, Saddam was silenced not executed. His dirtiest secrets died with him. Whew! Pew!
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! And her red shoes are red with blood.
To be truthful, the news left me as empty and sad as the news of Timothy McVeigh's death.
Saddam used his last moment to invoke Palestine. What else could he invoke? I wonder what the huddled, curfewed massess of Gaza thought as the news came over the radio and TV. Or was there another one of those interminable blackouts imposed by the Israelis as an expression of ironic, inpotent solidarity between the downtrodden of Palestine and Iraq.
One thing that the saga of Palestine has taught me that is relevant here is this: the wronged can do wrong in the name of right. The children of Warsaw can choose to transmute their victimhood into victimization--rather than transcend it.
For me, "Resist not evil" is still the rule. "Who amongst you is without sin?" is still the main question to the jury. These were the exhortations of a Jew to his own people. Or did the Father of that Son die when the Temple of Jerusalem was bulldozed by the Romans in 50 AD?
MEMORIES OF EICHMANN
During the mock trial of Saddam Hussein I kept remembering Hannah Arendt's dispatches to the New Yorker from the Jerusalem-based trial of Alolph Eichmann, Hitler's henchman in Hungary. She condemned the death sentence as a failure of justice, then she wrote "The Banality of Evil" to remind us that killing would have only been the right choice for the right reasons. And there was nothing in the verdict that suggested Eichmann was being executed for the right reasons.
What would have been the right reasons? Eichmann, like Hussein, should have stood in the docket of an international tribunal representing the totality of humanity and not just groups or persons wronged by the defendent. Further, every one with complicity in the horrors of his regime should have known they could also be named and called to testify. Crimes against humanity must be proven in a court room that truly represents this collective of spirit and society. Saddam was tried and killed by his victims acting on behalf of his long-time biggest sponsor: America. Such conflicts of interest should have been prevented, or, at least, acknowledged.
I know such purity of circumstance is a lot to ask for. But I ask it anyway. If my deliberations on the life of a person were allowed to be guided by rage and need for revenge, then, in the ultimate interests of humanity, I should recuse myself from sitting in judgment. This conflict of interest would poison any chance for the jury to serve the cause of justice.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! But not by my hand or vote or consent if given in rage or anger. The witch is dead only by fiat of reason not retribution; by solemn council not giddy unanimity.
Saddam, as I noted before, was executed at a US military base by men who cannot be, by dint of this fact, other than paid assassains of my country. Saddam was silenced not executed. Secrets and handshakes died with him whose revelation in a public courtroom to which the entire world has accesss was the only reason for his trial.
JUSTICE AS A PROOF OF GOD
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!--and what she knew died with her, making us no safer or wiser than before. Don't you think that somewhere in the world those wronged by Saddam didn't note the hypocritical irony that Donald Rumsfeld, who is as responsible for perpetuation of bloodshed in Iraq as the tyrant hung on friday night, gots a pink slip and comfortable retirement? Such trials kill God or make him seem more external to us.
If God is to live, He must live within us. If God is to be compassionate, merciful and just, it must be we who are His highest abode in creation so that we serve by mere fact of consciousness and conscience as the conduits of His sacred attributes. These attributes, Sufis like me believe, are His only form. If God is to be a deus in machina, not ex machina, his virtues must be carried by blood and breath into any and every contemplation of action. The Christ within is God-guided consciousness and behavior. And God can only "exist"--meaningfully--in the exercise of his attributes. The best proofs of God are existential.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! But the bell that brought the news is now cracked and unable to ring until it is repaired. The repair is the exercise and triumph of virtue, even, or especially, in the face of eveil--be it that of a dangling tyrant or a jostling Friday night crowd fresh from a hanging.
I suppose if I had lost half my family to Saddam Hussein, Friday night would have been cause for celebration. So maybe I would have joined the revellers in the streets of Dearborn and Baghdad who were in the mortifying throes of retribution rock.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!
Or is she?
The Wicked Witch of the West lives on. Indeed, Saddam took his last few breaths at one of her military bases. So much for his execution being the act--or convincing demonstration--of a free and independent Iraq. No, Saddam was silenced not executed. His dirtiest secrets died with him. Whew! Pew!
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! And her red shoes are red with blood.
To be truthful, the news left me as empty and sad as the news of Timothy McVeigh's death.
Saddam used his last moment to invoke Palestine. What else could he invoke? I wonder what the huddled, curfewed massess of Gaza thought as the news came over the radio and TV. Or was there another one of those interminable blackouts imposed by the Israelis as an expression of ironic, inpotent solidarity between the downtrodden of Palestine and Iraq.
One thing that the saga of Palestine has taught me that is relevant here is this: the wronged can do wrong in the name of right. The children of Warsaw can choose to transmute their victimhood into victimization--rather than transcend it.
For me, "Resist not evil" is still the rule. "Who amongst you is without sin?" is still the main question to the jury. These were the exhortations of a Jew to his own people. Or did the Father of that Son die when the Temple of Jerusalem was bulldozed by the Romans in 50 AD?
MEMORIES OF EICHMANN
During the mock trial of Saddam Hussein I kept remembering Hannah Arendt's dispatches to the New Yorker from the Jerusalem-based trial of Alolph Eichmann, Hitler's henchman in Hungary. She condemned the death sentence as a failure of justice, then she wrote "The Banality of Evil" to remind us that killing would have only been the right choice for the right reasons. And there was nothing in the verdict that suggested Eichmann was being executed for the right reasons.
What would have been the right reasons? Eichmann, like Hussein, should have stood in the docket of an international tribunal representing the totality of humanity and not just groups or persons wronged by the defendent. Further, every one with complicity in the horrors of his regime should have known they could also be named and called to testify. Crimes against humanity must be proven in a court room that truly represents this collective of spirit and society. Saddam was tried and killed by his victims acting on behalf of his long-time biggest sponsor: America. Such conflicts of interest should have been prevented, or, at least, acknowledged.
I know such purity of circumstance is a lot to ask for. But I ask it anyway. If my deliberations on the life of a person were allowed to be guided by rage and need for revenge, then, in the ultimate interests of humanity, I should recuse myself from sitting in judgment. This conflict of interest would poison any chance for the jury to serve the cause of justice.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! But not by my hand or vote or consent if given in rage or anger. The witch is dead only by fiat of reason not retribution; by solemn council not giddy unanimity.
Saddam, as I noted before, was executed at a US military base by men who cannot be, by dint of this fact, other than paid assassains of my country. Saddam was silenced not executed. Secrets and handshakes died with him whose revelation in a public courtroom to which the entire world has accesss was the only reason for his trial.
JUSTICE AS A PROOF OF GOD
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead!--and what she knew died with her, making us no safer or wiser than before. Don't you think that somewhere in the world those wronged by Saddam didn't note the hypocritical irony that Donald Rumsfeld, who is as responsible for perpetuation of bloodshed in Iraq as the tyrant hung on friday night, gots a pink slip and comfortable retirement? Such trials kill God or make him seem more external to us.
If God is to live, He must live within us. If God is to be compassionate, merciful and just, it must be we who are His highest abode in creation so that we serve by mere fact of consciousness and conscience as the conduits of His sacred attributes. These attributes, Sufis like me believe, are His only form. If God is to be a deus in machina, not ex machina, his virtues must be carried by blood and breath into any and every contemplation of action. The Christ within is God-guided consciousness and behavior. And God can only "exist"--meaningfully--in the exercise of his attributes. The best proofs of God are existential.
Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead! But the bell that brought the news is now cracked and unable to ring until it is repaired. The repair is the exercise and triumph of virtue, even, or especially, in the face of eveil--be it that of a dangling tyrant or a jostling Friday night crowd fresh from a hanging.
posted by David Federman @ 5:53 AM
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