PACKET EDITORIAL, May 20
By: Packet Editorial
With the body count mounting every day, with car bombers and snipers and drive-by shooters taking deadly aim at Iraqi and American targets all across his country, Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari issued a stern warning this week.
"The new government will strike with an iron fist against any criminal who tries to harm a Sunni or a Shiite citizen," the prime minister declared. And, just in case any of those criminals might be tempted to think he won’t make good on his threat, he added, "The death sentence will be implemented."
Well, that’s certainly going to quiet things down in Iraq, isn’t it?
We’re sure this kind of tough-talking leadership is just what’s needed to inspire the silent majority of right-thinking Iraqis to embrace Western-style democracy and leave that ragtag minority of cowardly militants quaking in their boots. After all, any would-be suicide bomber is bound to think twice before strapping explosives all over his body and heading for the nearest gathering of Sunnis and Shiites if he knows the death sentence is going to be implemented.
Right?
We presume the prime minister is actually aware enough of conditions in his country not to mention some of his countrymen’s rather fervent religious beliefs, especially as they relate to martyrdom not to count on capital punishment functioning as much of a deterrent. We presume he’s intelligent enough to realize that any suicide bomber who might fail at his mission of blowing up a few Sunni or Shiite citizens (in addition to himself) would quite welcome implementation of the death sentence which would, of course, be precisely the reason not to impose it.
Ah, but all of this presumes that some thought has actually been given to the whole issue of capital punishment, and what purpose it might serve. Princeton-based Centurion Ministries, which regularly represents inmates on death row, has given this matter a great deal of thought. This respected nonprofit organization knows that in the United States, one of the few remaining Western nations where the death penalty is still imposed, even its most ardent advocates justify it only as a deterrent to crime, not as an act of vengeance. Even President Bush, who imposed it with numbing regularity as governor of Texas, never cited the biblical eye-for-an-eye as cause for the ultimate sanction.
Yet the Iraqi prime minister chooses to implement this particular crime-fighting tool, which has not only proven to be ineffective at fighting crime in the United States, but is wholly inappropriate to the type of criminal activity that’s taking place in Iraq.
Spreading the principles of freedom and democracy across the Middle East and throughout the world is the only defensible justification President Bush has given for his administration’s decision to wage war in Iraq. Now, one of the Iraqi prime minister’s earliest expressions of devotion to these principles turns out to be a threat to implement the death penalty. When we send our citizens into harm’s way on behalf of others, we should set our sights a lot higher than that.

