{"id":219,"date":"2007-01-10T16:22:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-10T16:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/saddam-punished-with-justice.html"},"modified":"2007-01-10T16:22:00","modified_gmt":"2007-01-10T16:22:00","slug":"saddam-punished-with-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/saddam-punished-with-justice.html","title":{"rendered":"Saddam: Punished with Justice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ancient rabbis who wrote the Talmud (in modern-day Falluja, incidentally<\/a>) understood something very important about capital punishment that we in this country\u2013to say nothing of those in Iraq\u2013seem to have forgotten. It\u2019s not that capital punishment is philosophically indefensible, as some suggest. Extreme as this sanction is, there are some crimes for which the only just punishment is death, and to my mind Saddam Hussein fully deserved<\/em> to be executed.<\/p>\n

The problem with capital punishment is that it is nearly indefensible from a practical<\/em> point of vie: How do you create a system with enough safeguards to guarantee the rights of the defendant? How do you create enough certainty about the correctness of the verdict? How do you execute in a way that still protects the dignity of the victim and of the society that carries it out, and how do you ensure that the aftermath of the punishment will lead to more healing and not more recriminations?<\/p>\n

All of these vital questions are exhaustively taken up by the rabbis who, in a brilliant act of ingenuity, proclaim the theoretical<\/em> possibility of capital punishment while simultaneously putting so many safeguards in place as to make it almost impossible in practical terms. The current situation in Iraq bears witness to what happens when the rush to punish outstrips the demands of justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ancient rabbis who wrote the Talmud (in modern-day Falluja, incidentally) understood something very important about capital punishment that we in this country\u2013to say nothing of those in Iraq\u2013seem to have forgotten. It\u2019s not that capital punishment is philosophically indefensible, as some suggest. Extreme as this sanction is, there are some crimes for which the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSaddam: Punished with Justice? - Virtual Talmud<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/saddam-punished-with-justice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Saddam: Punished with Justice? - Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The ancient rabbis who wrote the Talmud (in modern-day Falluja, incidentally) understood something very important about capital punishment that we in this country\u2013to say nothing of those in Iraq\u2013seem to have forgotten. It\u2019s not that capital punishment is philosophically indefensible, as some suggest. Extreme as this sanction is, there are some crimes for which the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/saddam-punished-with-justice.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Virtual Talmud\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-10T16:22:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Rabbi Joshua Waxman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Saddam: Punished with Justice? - Virtual Talmud","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/virtualtalmud\/2007\/01\/saddam-punished-with-justice.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Saddam: Punished with Justice? - Virtual Talmud","og_description":"The ancient rabbis who wrote the Talmud (in modern-day Falluja, incidentally) understood something very important about capital punishment that we in this country\u2013to say nothing of those in Iraq\u2013seem to have forgotten. 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