At the End of Our Rope

The deposed leader of Iraq Saddam Hussein has been hanged before the eyes of the world--quite literally, because of a leaked videotape of the hanging. Called a brutal dictator, a murder, responsible for untold crimes against his neighbors and his own people, his removal from power has been the retrofitted reason the Bush administration has given for our invasion of Iraq. (Before the war, you may recall, it was because of "weapons of mass destruction;" after no such weapons were found, the rationale morphed into "regime change.")

His death may well be justice for his crimes; the world may in fact be better of without Saddam Hussein in it. I am in no position to judge. But the image of a man falling to his death at the end of a rope in a world where that image can be captured on a cell phone and almost instantaneously sent around the world via the Internet--that upsets me. It's like one of those episodes of Star Trek when Kirk and company land on a planet with tremendously futuristic technology on which everyone nonetheless acts as if it's Earth's "old west." The juxtaposition is jarring. What are we doing hanging people--anyone--in the twenty-first century?

Albert Einstein once famously said, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” When will we learn that war is not the way to make peace? That fear and hatred cannot bring a shift to love? That murder--even state sanctioned murder, even for one who deserves to die--is simply not right?

I hope it's soon enough because at times I fear that it's we who are at the end of our rope.

in gassho,

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