A Dead Leader, A New Plan

December 30th, 2006 will go down as one of the most important days in the history of the world. The Iraqi government put to death its former dictator, convicted murderer, and terror minded leader Saddam Hussein. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum you are on, I would hope that anyone who understands how humanity works would realize that the fact that Saddam is gone is a great thing. Now before anyone jumps all over me for being pro-death penalty, I want to get this out there right now. The death penalty is one of the very few areas that I tend to stray from the right a little bit. Honestly, I am never sure how I really feel about it, because I try to put myself in someone’s position like a mother or father, and imagining my child being killed, how would I feel about the person that committed the horrendous crime and would I be able to say no, I don’t want them dead. It would be an incredibly difficult situation, one I pray I never have to go through. To be honest, it comes down to my faith.
Many of you know I am Christian, and my reservations about the death penalty are directly attributed to that and that alone, because my hope would be that the person who killed someone would somehow be able to give their heart to Christ while incarcerated, that they would be able to truly have a changed heart. Whether that is possible in a true, evil, murderous person is beyond me, and only God knows the final outcome of any of us. So, back to Saddam. Hearing about his execution, I had very mixed emotions. I usually side on the non-death penalty side, but something hit me when watching the news that night as the minutes passed leading to his execution. I didn’t have those feelings of reservation as I normally would. I thought about the over 1 million people according to many sources that Saddam had killed. Whether he pulled the trigger or not is irrelevant: his words were the trigger. And, on December 30th, the final trigger in the Saddam era was pulled, and the bullet was a rope around his neck. So who is the victor here? Usually in a death penalty case, no-one comes out a winner. However, this is not a usual case. Here we had a man that had terrorized a nation for decades. If you didn’t vote for him in elections, your life was at risk. If you joked about him in an unflattering manner, you jeopardized you and your family’s lives. Everything you said about him was listened to, and reported to someone, and if word got around you were a dissenting voice to him, death was almost inevitable. Here we had a man not afraid to use chemical and biological weapons against his own people in his own country, and he did so. Millions died on his clock. Millions were terrified into living a life of fear and hopelessness all at this man’s hand. That all became impossible for that man to ever do again on December 14th 2003, when, like the coward he really was, Saddam was found in a hole in the ground, whimpering in a corner, unclean and unshaven, scared and hopeless, afraid for his life. Fitting, isn’t it?
So, almost exactly 3 years later, Saddam was hung, with chants around him that mocked him, that insulted him, that ridiculed him. And millions of people almost instantaneously felt a sense of justice, although not comforted. However, for those millions of people, a sense of fear was lifted. Never again could the man that made them live in horror for decades be in charge. He would never kill again. So if you ask me am I for the death penalty? I guess sometimes, I may just be. Moving on.
Last night, President Bush got on national television and outlined the plan to try and make Iraq what we’ve been hoping for since the beginning of the war. Of course, within hours, we had the skeptics coming out and saying why it wont work, how it isn’t different from the current strategy and all the main liberal speak you typically hear anytime after the President opens his mouth. You have Democratic leaders already threatening to cut funding and to do everything they can to make sure that we lose this war. Of course they won’t say that, but it is becoming more and more obvious that the Democrats are playing politics with the Iraq situation, and that a loss would perceivably help them in years to come. You see, they want to come across as supportive and pro military. They want the country to believe they love our troops. But, that’s going to be hard to if they truly attempt to STOP FUNDING them. I have a prediction. Regardless of the outcome in Iraq, the liberal media is going to play this out as a losing effort. They will show the horrific images coming out of Iraq, they will flash the dollar signs and costs of the war in Iraq, they will shove people like Cindy Sheehan in the spotlight, they will let Hillary get the publicity, and all the good that has been done will get nothing. The schools built, the people freed and most importantly, the executed dictator who is the reason behind all this, will not be talked about, unless it is in a negative light. You notice the discussion is not about us taking out an insane terror-minded dictator, but about how well (or how not well) his execution went. Forget the millions of people he tortured and killed, and the families which will never recover because of him. No, the discussion was about his rights and how fairly or not fairly he was treated. And unless the Democrats win the white house in 2008, the if-it-bleeds-it-leads mentality of the media will continue on, portraying just how “bad” the job the republicans are doing is. Bush will be made out as a fool, as arrogant and ignorant of the Iraq situation. Even with a clearly defined plan, a clearly defined objective and a clearly defined motive, we will not hear about it. The Hillarys out there will continue to completely mislead the people that hear them to gain political advantage in their attempt to take over in 2008. If they do somehow win the ’08 bid for the white house, then they’ll be made out to be hero’s and saviors, that they’ll save lives with embryonic stem cells, that they are the ones who will save our sons and daughters from being killed in war and that they are the ones who will keep our economy alive. The media will do a 180, turning into optimists and hopeful, and rejoicing in their victory (even though most of it will be behind closed doors). I hope that we are all smart enough and vigilant enough to understand what is going on here, to understand what is truly at stake. Not just a free country in the middle east. Not just the only democracy in a war-torn area. Not just millions of liberated people, no. We need to understand that support now for our president, for our troops and military, and for what is right is essential in making sure that the world knows we stand for what is right, and what is good, and what noble: that the politics have to be put down, and that there are millions of lives at stake here, ours and our cross-sea allies. If you listen to the Democratic-leadership, you would think we are sending out troops to their death-beds. But, I bet if you ask the troops, they’ll differ in opinion. They know we are fighting a just cause, fighting to protect us here on the homeland, fighting to keep the rights we have intact. You won’t hear it, but I hope everyone who listens to this or reads this sees beyond the political-motivations of the left, and can see that we CAN win. I wonder, do they even want us to win? We are waiting for your support Hillary, Joe (Biden), Michael, Al...oh wait, they aren’t listening. They are busy not supporting right causes, but doubting our military, our president, and most of all, what America stands for: freedom and justice. – AJW