The Dalai Lama has asked that the life of Saddam Hussein be spared.
Quoted in an AFP news story posted on Yahoo, he says:
“The death penalty is said to fulfill a preventive function, yet it is clearly a form of revenge," the Nobel peace laureate told reporters.
"However horrible an act a person may have committed, everyone has the potential to improve and correct himself," he said.
"I hope that in the case of Saddam Hussein, as with all others, that human life will be respected and spared."
This gave me pause because somewhere along the line I became a person who believes that some people will not change, that evil begets evil, and the best way to end the cycle of snowballing acts of violence, deception, and immorality is to end the life of the perpetrator.
But wait, isn’t this what terrorists believe?
Isn’t this what the U.S. government believes?
Isn’t this the rationale that’s used to justify torture and killings the world over?
As a young news reporter, I covered the local police beat and the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. I saw crime scene photos of blood splattered walls, graphic images of people who had been murdered in their homes, and read pages and pages and pages of documents detailing heinous crimes.
When the pardon and parole board would meet at the state’s maximum security prison, I spent two full days immersed not only in the crimes that landed people in prison to start with, but also the crimes and offenses they committed once they arrived there. During the hearings and some other events at the prison, I sat next to murderers, sex offenders, and notorious criminals as well as drug addicts and pushers, drunk drivers, burglars and robbers, and wrong-time-wrong-place offenders.
I heard a woman who had doused her four children with kerosene and set them on fire explain to the parole board chairman that she’d “been under a lot of stress at the time.” I heard the testimony of someone who had stabbed a woman in a Safeway parking lot because of a disagreement over who was entitled to a particular parking place. I covered a re-trial that resulted in the release of a man who had been in prison for years and years. I saw his relief and the family of the victim’s grief wash over their faces in equal measure. This wasn’t a TV show or a drama, these were real people and real lives, damaged and ruined. Beyond repair?
At one point in my brief journalism career, I was summoned to the prison and asked to meet with an inmate who was holding a woman nurse hostage in the prison infirmary. The male inmate wanted to talk to a reporter from my paper, and the warden and prison psychologist hoped that if I met with him, I might be able to negotiate the nurse’s release. I never thought of saying no even though I was ill-equipped for the job.
I went face to face with the guy, talking to him through a wide crack in the door he’d propped open. Part of the shock of the experience was recognizing that this person, who was not that much taller than me and wiry in build, had locked down an entire prison for more than a day by threatening one person with a small, sharpened piece of metal.
She was cowering on the floor with a tear- and mascara-stained face while I listened to her captor ramble on about his crimes and how he didn’t deserve to be in prison. It was hard to concentrate on what he was saying and ask questions. My brain froze, and to this day, I struggle to remember what he said--something about a bartender in Florida who could provide him with an alibi. Though I've forgotten his words and even his name, I can still see his face. He had red hair and brown eyes, just like me.
The moment I turned my back on him and walked away, heading down a corridor, he hung himself.
The SWAT team that was covering my ass while I talked to him stormed the infirmary, cut him and down, and saved his life.
They could have turned their heads when they entered that room. They could have focused on getting the woman out and paused for just a moment longer before cutting him down, letting him die in the process.
But they didn’t.
They saved him from himself and put him on a gurney. The hallway filled first with the horrible gurgling sound of his strangled breaths and then with the unearthly sound of his wails. He survived, and at his hearing on the hostage-taking incident, he tried to attack a news photographer.
Working as a reporter, I realized some people live only to create discord, pain, and violence in every setting they find themselves in, and in my mind, I found a lot of justification for the death penalty, and yet the desire to preserve human life in all its permutations is overwhelming.
Had I been alone in that room with that man when he hung himself, would I have let him die? Despite my intellectual support of the death penalty, would I have volunteered to cover an execution at the prison? Would I have been able to flip the switch, empty the syringe, or release the trap door on someone sentenced to death? I know I wouldn’t have been able to do any of those things, then or now.
Despite the nightmares that haunted me for years after I quit work as a reporter, despite my feelings that some people don’t deserve to breathe good air and see the dawn of another day, my instinct is to preserve life, even life I abhor.
Still, I flinched when the Dalai Lama made a plea for Saddam’s life. As a Christian, I know Jesus offers redemption to all people in all times and circumstances, but there are moments I don’t want to consider the implications of that truth. It can be easy to dismiss as well-intentioned and idealistic the pacifists and people of many faiths who eschew violence in all forms, yet I understand the thought process that acknowledges the danger of the path we set our feet on when we see killing as an unpleasant means to a noble end.
Do I want to see Saddam hang for the atrocities he committed? Would that pave the way for a fresh beginning for the millions who suffered at his hand? Would that deter his supporters from trying to carry on his legacy? Is an imperturbable, matter-of-fact, zero tolerance policy that delivers consequences for actions effective? Is it just?
Or would I prefer to see Saddam’s life spared and a message delivered on the power of non-violence in the peace-making process?
Do I believe either policy makes the world a better place or have I given up hope on shifting the balance between good and evil in the world? Such a loss of hope may be the most dangerous thing of all.
This morning I have no answers. Just questions to follow me through this day and the days to come.
November 13, 2007
Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com.