Pen-Elayne on the Web

The Killing Feels

I've been trying to figure out why all this "We killed Hussein's sons, yay!" stuff bothers me. Brooke Biggs (link at sidebar) echoes my unease to some extent in the first paragraph of her essay As Our Souls Shrivel. "This is what we have become, people. Not only a nation that commits political assassinations without compunction (and with merchandising spin-offs, like those most-wanted playing cards), but we have little parties in the streets when we succeed." She also links to this column by Dennis Roddy which raises a good point: "You don't kill the other team's captain because they might take it as license to kill yours." And I'm sorry, but all this "ding dong the witch is dead" celebratory bullshit is just barbaric. There are certainly people I've privately wanted to see meet their Maker sooner rather than later (although I certainly haven't gone on television to pray for their deaths!), but the idea of collectively applauding someone being killed is just too ghoulish to me, it makes it into little more than a Roman spectacle. And if you learn nothing else from superhero comics, you ought to at least remember that this is the kind of thing that makes Us no better than Them. All in all, I'd much rather see the assholes and criminals on either end brought to justice and perhaps left to languish in some horrid prison for the rest of their lives, ignored then forgotten, than see them become martyrs to their causes and fodder for our skewed idea of entertainment. Even Iraqi blogger Salam Pax, who has more reason than any of us Americans to have a grudge against the Hussein family, observes, "this is just the easy way out for them. they should have been humiliated in public, images of them handcuffed and being pushed around." Update: Jeanne also has some interesting thoughts on this. As does Natalie. And Terry. Y'all are doing this old gal's heart good, folks.