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If you’re in the mood for a classic example of where the mush-minded left stands these days, be sure to check out today’s New York Times editorial that laments the imminent neck-stretching of Saddam Hussein. Risibly titled “The Rush to Hang Saddam Hussein,” the piece bears eloquent testimony to how certain elements of the left reflexively side with America’s malefactors, even when common sense, decency and logic dictates otherwise.
The Times’ reluctance to pull the hangman’s switch is truly puzzling. The editorial itself concedes that there was never any doubt regarding his guilt:
The public record is bulging with the lengthy litany of his vile and unforgivable atrocities: genocidal assaults against the Kurds; aggressive wars against Iran and Kuwait; use of internationally banned weapons like nerve gas; systematic torture of countless thousands of political prisoners.
But arranging a date between Saddam and justice, according to the Times’ tortured logic, wasn’t what really mattered. “What really mattered,” argued the Times, “was whether an Iraq freed from his death grip could hold him accountable in a way that nurtured hope for a better future.”
You have to wonder, do these guys really believe this crap?
THE POINT IN KILLING SADDAM HUSSEIN is to make one of history’s monsters accountable for his depredations. Justice is impossible; taking Saddam’s life can’t possibly balance the ledger for the hundreds of thousands of people that he killed. But killing Saddam is the closest that civilization can come to justice.
The Grey Lady has become so morally muddled that she can’t see this. Instead of expressing satisfaction that the bitter chapter of Saddam Hussein’s life will finally (and belatedly) come to a close, the Times laments the “rush” to execute him and whines that it’s all happening too fast.
Huh? Saddam has been on trial for God-knows how many months now, even though there was never a shred of doubt regarding his guilt. What’s more, Saddam’s qualifications for the hangman’s noose, if one believes that such a penalty can ever be appropriate, had been firmly established years before he sat in the dock hearing the details of his horrors.
What’s especially odd about the Times’ editorial is that it doesn’t take issue with Saddam getting the death penalty. The Grey Lady’s only beef is the alleged haste with which the penalty is being meted out.
IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO BELIEVE that the Times’ editorialists are this obtuse. I’m sorry – while I have an appropriate and indeed awed respect for their determined imbecility, I can’t believe that they really think that this is all happening too fast. After all, there had to be a day of decision and a day of action. By any reasonable accounting, the appropriate moment for both such days is long overdue.
The Timesmen make their agenda clear in the editorial’s final paragraph:
Toppling Saddam Hussein did not automatically create a new and better Iraq. Executing him won’t either.
So true. Executing Saddam also won’t “automatically create” a solvent Social Security System or a perpetual motion machine. So why bother?
The truth is this: If anything might create the appearance that the Bush administration actually accomplished something, the Times opposes it. Regardless of whether it’s just, right or fair.
How pathetic. And how sadly unsurprising.
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