Execution Without Wrath

Executions are awful, not least because they can make you feel sorry even for monsters. Watching Saddam Hussein go to his death the other day, I noticed, to my chagrin, a twinge of sympathy for him run through me. This sickened me far more than did the absurd procedure of hanging, in which, instead of simply taking a club and breaking a man's neck as is done with a baby seal, we do it by putting him through a choreographed dance of ropes, knots, and trapdoors.

I suppose this is in part the point of executions. The more ingenious are the methods of killing people — dropping a blade from a 10-foot height on their necks, constructing at great cost a special chair to send an electric current through their bodies, having a long line of soldiers put a bullet apiece in them when a single shot would suffice — the more they are meant to create a ritual that transcends the mere act of putting someone to death.

Is this because we have a bad conscience about what we are doing? In the case of Saddam it is difficult to imagine why we should. The man murdered many thousands. Why is his life worth more than theirs? Although there are good reasons to be against capital punishment as a general policy, especially since the more widely it is resorted to, the greater is the likelihood of innocent people being mistakenly executed, I can't think of a single reason that would apply to Saddam. You have to be the bloodiest of bleeding-heart liberals to believe his life deserved to be spared.

And yet by creating complicity between him and us, his inclusion in the ritual, as though he were a fellow actor in our play, squeezed a bit of blood from us against our will. We were forced as spectators to identify with him, even if only for a second, just as, if the actor is convincing enough, some part of us identifies with a stage villain.

Indeed when it comes to his own death, every man is convincing — even Saddam, despite the fact that he seemed to show no fear at all. When one tries imaginatively to put oneself in his place, this is incomprehensible. How not fear the imminent end of everything? We all know very well that, if we were in his place, we would be shaking in our boots, even if we fought not to show it.

Perhaps he was heavily medicated, even though I don't believe there is any medication that could keep most people from being terrified in such a situation. Or else, even with the rope around his neck, he never thought he really would die. The only emotions he seemed to show, anger and bafflement, might indicate that this was so. Didn't his executioners understand that he was immortal? Perhaps only a man who can't imagine his own death can order the deaths of so many others.

In any case, he died, as they say, well. One would have preferred him not to have. He should have, for our sakes, whimpered and quaked. It's unpleasant to have to think that besides being a vicious sadist, he was also a brave man. But then again, fearlessness is not the same as bravery. Perhaps, as we have said, he was only being unimaginative.

Executions are awful. Yet some people deserve to die. To be against executing a Saddam on humanitarian principles, or because human life is too holy for us to take, is revoltingly sanctimonious. It is exhibiting contempt for all the lives that the murderer has taken. It is saying that none of them was holy at all.

Perhaps we look at the issue of capital punishment the wrong way. We're far too civilized about it. If we argue for it in some cases, we support its being a dispassionate procedure carried out by the state, like handing out a traffic ticket. Emotions, we say, should have nothing to do with it, especially not the desire for revenge.

But what, really, is wrong with the desire for revenge? What is more natural? What can better bring some peace or closure to the hearts of the next of kin? What was wrong with killing Saddam so that they should have it?

Actually, they should have been allowed to kill him themselves.

I've often thought that capital punishment should be permitted, under certain circumstances, on one condition: that it be approved of and carried out by the families of the murder victim. Let them be the ones, not only to decide, but also to implement the decision. If they want to kill the murderer, let them do so. If they haven't the desire or the stomach for it, let him live.

What, throw Saddam to a mob of howling Iraqis and have them tear him apart?

Yes, why not? It's impractical, I know, but it would have made a far more satisfying spectacle than the one we were shown on TV. And oddly, had it happened that way, the twinge of pity for the man wouldn't have been there. We would have identified not with him but with the wrath of his executioners.

The worst part about executions is that they are performed without wrath, like slaughtering a cow. Who doesn't feel at least a little bit sorry for the cow? After all, we have nothing personal against it. And it's their impersonality, not their taking of life, that makes executions seem so inhuman.

Mr. Halkin is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.