I know people who object to the death penalty for any reason, but I say bollocks. People the world over die for trivial reasons, so why rule out killing people for good* reasons (I assume there are some such reasons).

OTOH, I can't think of any crime that *demands* execution as a punishment.

Moreover, it would seem to common approaches to crime, punishment, and research ethics go out the window when it comes to the case of a mass-murdering dictator. I don't see how it can be beyond the pale to at least explore alternatives in such an extreme situation.

Certainly, many people believe that Saddam's execution did not serve justice. But scientific value should not be part of that calculation

Ridiculous, of course it should. "Justice" isn't about punishing people on principle, but about doing something useful: keeping this guy from doing more harm and making an example for the next guy. If Hitler's blood cures AIDS, then "justice" is deciding whether Hitler is more useful to humanity as a living blood bank or an "example" for future uppity dictators. (be it swinging by a rope or rotting in jail)

This isn't at all to say that justice should be carte blanche, since even limits are a calculation on maximizing the greatest good for the greatest number. If torture gets the job done without blowback, go nuts, but it likely doesn't.

I guess the reason why I am so revulsed is that Dawkins explicitly sets his interest in scientific inquiry above the cause of justice...I'd say that far more important to our future is the value of justice over science. Certainly, many people believe that Saddam's execution did not serve justice. But scientific value should not be part of that calculation.

That's a valid objection, but I'm not sure I entirely agree.

That might be a valid objection to Dawkins' OpEd had he actually put "his interest in scientific inquiry above the cause of justice", but I cannot see how anyone who actually read the OpEd can claim that with a straight face. Perhaps those who make that claim would show me specifically where in the OpEd that position is suggested. In particular, where is it explicitly set out that scientific inquiry is to be considered superior to justice. What Dawkins argued was that scientific inquiry is one among several reasons not to have killed Saddam. How is that setting science above justice?

the problem for me with the death penalty or torture as punishment is that any justice system has false positives, and I don't care to die (or be tortured) for no reason, though presumably being imprisioned injustly would still be a pain.

As an institution, then, the death penalty bothers me, though I have no problem with it in principle. though I agree, I can't think of any crime that *demands* the death penalty.

What Dawkins argued was that scientific inquiry is one among several reasons not to have killed Saddam

well yeah. and Hawks is saying scientific inquiry should not be part of that calculation.

If killing 100 criminals resulted in the unintented deaths of 2 innocent men by state execution, but resulted in the preservation of 5 innocent lives through the negative incentive to would-be murderers, then I see no reason the 2 innocent death policy should be disfavored.

As with most politics though, we don't, and can't, know the true numbers, so perhaps we should stick with the "clean-hands" policies (no torture, no death, etc).

The whole dispute seems weird to me. From a hitorian's point of view there's nothing unusual about Saddam; he's just a garden variety, pretty successful despot. Presumably he worked by intimidation, brutality, treachery, and bribery like all the rest of them. Presumably he was motivated by the desire for power and wealth. Presumably he succeeded as long as he did because he was a pretty good despot with pretty good luck.

I didn't read Dawkin's piece, but if he thinks that there's be some illumination about why Iraq is the way it is coming from an examination of Saddam personally, he shows that he has an enormous misunderstanding of the way things work. Saddam's regime was not a personal aberration.

If killing 100 criminals resulted in the unintented deaths of 2 innocent men

It would also be valid to argue that a justice system that never convicts the innocent allows a fair number of murders to go free and kill again.

-- murderers ---

Once again Dawkins strikes me as being a whack job, or maybe just so far off in his own brilliant self-referential thing that he might as well be a whackjob.

Would it be interesting to know a bit more about what made Saddam tick? Sure.

But -- and someone really ought to tell Dawkins this -- when it comes to things like dictators, trials, executions, wars, the deaths of hundreds of thousands, etc, rational, impartial, "objective," for-the-benefit-of-all decisionmaking is hard to find.

There's no board of experts sitting around, smoking pipes, debating as gentleman what should really be done about that Saddam problem. Instead, huge forces -- gigantic amounts of political power, egos, political horsetrading, popular demands, p-r worries, much else -- are quarreling it out with each other. Our hypothetical objective well-meaning expert is, in practical fact, like a man in rowboat out in the ocean during a typhoon.

What I'd love to know a little more about is the brain of Richard Dawkins. Why not interview him? Why not dissect his brain? How can such a smart guy be so dumb?

It's as bad as I feared.:

But perhaps the most important research in which a living Saddam Hussein could have helped is psychological. Most people can't even come close to understanding how any man could be so cruel as Hitler or Hussein, or how such transparently evil monsters could secure sufficient support to take over an entire country.

What were the formative influences on these men? Was it something in their childhood that turned them bad? In their genes? In their testosterone levels? Could the danger have been nipped in the bud by an alert psychiatrist? How would Hitler or Hussein have responded to a different style of education? We don't have a clear answer to these questions. We need to do the research.

Somehow, with all the incredibly vicious sectarian violence in Iraq right now, I am not all that interested in the depravity of one man. I don't think there's much scientific value in Saddam the person or the brain. The man is a product of his culture as much as anything else and that's best understood at the population level.

Dawkins' best buddy PZ is "down" with it.

...i just wish dawkins would get back to science. he's a great prose stylist who is excellent at capturing the essence if evolutionary biology. as for the rest, he's just another celebrity with an opinion.

He seems like a trekkie in his overall philosophy. With the atheism, pacifism, and now this bizarre "don't execute, study it" thing, too Utopian and not realistic.

He's a Trekkie! That's just right.

I like this on punishment and neuroscience.

Apologies if I've already posted that here before.

I agree with John Emerson. Dawkins has to ridiculously optimistic about humanity to believe that Saddam Hussein was significantly more cruel than ordinary human beings are (or would have been in similar situations).

If killing 100 criminals resulted in the unintented deaths of 2 innocent men by state execution, but resulted in the preservation of 5 innocent lives through the negative incentive to would-be murderers, then I see no reason the 2 innocent death policy should be disfavored.

i think the state should be held to a higher standard with regard to killing innocent people than murderers, and i wonder how much of a deterrent capital punishment is anyway. after all, if the state kills everybody then there is zero chance of future murders.

i think a better argument for the death penalty is that you've got to satisfy victims' families that justice has been served (because of our innate justice thingie), or else they'll go out and cause problems themselves (lynch mobs, etc). which is why i was daydreaming of a scheme to fake death penalties and began wondering about the utility of public shaming and whatnot. a law school buddy assured me that we didn't want to go that route. it gets ugly quick i guess.

In the article, Dawkins also mentions keeping Hussein around to better understand his relationship with the American government in the 80's.

I recall reading a long article (in the New Yorker?) about Hussein's journey to power, his tastes in movies and books (fairly banal), etc., and walking away with the impression that the guy was just your standard tribal big man ("pu yai", here in Thailand) who was merely in the right places at the right times.

What Dawkins argued was that scientific inquiry is one among several reasons not to have killed Saddam

well yeah. and Hawks is saying scientific inquiry should not be part of that calculation.

Precisely. I don't see why this is a difficult point for people to grasp. I can understand those who disagree, but the "one reason among many" idea is bunk -- if there are "many" other valid reasons, then why do they think it is worth mucking science into it?

after all, if the state kills everybody then there is zero chance of future murders.

Um, ok. I miss the equivalency by quite a distance. Remember we're talking about the cost of accidental innocents. There is an optimum amount of pollution. . . I mean, friendly fire, like there is an optimum amount of dust in your house. Let's be reasonable.

i think a better argument for the death penalty is that you've got to satisfy victims' families that justice has been served

This is the worst possible reason I can think of. "Revenge" is superstitious, and therefore antithetical to justice. Vigilantes need to be dealt with like the criminals they are, not preemptively appeased with injustice (badly premised punishment).

The most essantial words of Dawkins are for me:

the American government's enthusiastic arming of Saddam before they switched loyalties

and

how such transparently evil monsters could secure sufficient support to take over an entire country

May be, Dawkins is a better historian and political thinker than most. We have a lot of evidence for the financial support of the Bolshewists 1917ff (and during WW II ...). And we have some good evidence for the financial support of Hitler before and after 1933. So - for the future democracies might like to know EARLIER the details. - ?

And more: There are a lot of dubious facts around the death of people like Rudolf Hess. So speaking against removing of people with essential knowledge is the best a democrat can do.

Twasher: my point, though, was not that Hussein was psychologically evil, but that he was a common functional type at the head of one of the characteristic types of government.

Saddam wasn't only guy in the world like that. There are still places where similiar people rule and do similiar things.

How about mining Saddam's brain, then executing him?

From a hitorian's point of view there's nothing unusual about Saddam; he's just a garden variety, pretty successful despot. Presumably he worked by intimidation, brutality, treachery, and bribery like all the rest of them. Presumably he was motivated by the desire for power and wealth. Presumably he succeeded as long as he did because he was a pretty good despot with pretty good luck.

you use the word presumably there a lot. I'm not a historian, but wouldn't saddam have been a useful resource in getting rid of that word?

But I imagine historians would love to ask him about his regime

I think that for precisely this reason he was sent to gallows ASAP. Before even his further crimes and their background and accomplices could have been publicly revealed.

P-ter: what would the contraries be? I was trying to list the most generic traits of all despots.

Do you suggest, for example, that there is one of the following which he did not use: intimidation, brutality, treachery, or bribery?

Dawkin's belief that there's something unusual about Saddam's behavior, something which needs psychological explanation, is just silly. In a word in which violence and cruelty are rewarded with success, the successful people will be volent and cruel. It's a social selection process.

I notice that no one's picking up on my point about how this is all silly thought-experimenting anyway, since -- where wars, torturers, dictators, vengeful populations, tribes, etc, go -- there's no committee of impartial experts sitting around that anyone will ever pay attention to anyway ... Oh well.

Earth to Richard Dawkins: You wouldn't be just a wee bit naive about how the world works, would you? Or do you just love playing the role of intellectual pest?

Dawkin's belief that there's something unusual about Saddam's behavior, something which needs psychological explanation, is just silly. In a word in which violence and cruelty are rewarded with success, the successful people will be volent and cruel. It's a social selection process.

You're too sure of yourself. Sure, Saddam used intimidation, brutality, etc., and he was probably just another generic despot. but psychologists and historians like to get into the nitty-gritty things-- what is the expressed motivation for action X, and what were the circumstances surrrounding action Y. Do you think there's absolutely nothing a historian or psychologist could have learned if Saddam were alive? It's possible (I certainly can't think of much of the top of my head), but experts in the history of Iraq might disagree.

I notice that no one's picking up on my point about how this is all silly thought-experimenting anyway, since -- where wars, torturers, dictators, vengeful populations, tribes, etc, go -- there's no committee of impartial experts sitting around that anyone will ever pay attention to anyway ... Oh well.

he's dead now, so all we can do is thought-experiment :) Honestly, I don't think Dawkins published this for any other reason than to provoke. I'm sure he's aware of all the context going into the decision to execute Saddam (indeed, he mentions some of it at the start of the article) but he wants to point out another aspect that he thought about, and few other people did.

Do you think there's absolutely nothing a historian or psychologist could have learned if Saddam were alive?

A historian, yes. A psychologist, much less likely. Dawkins was speaking of Saddam as though he were a strange aberration that needed to be explained, when in fact he was a normal, successful, standard type. Iraq was not a horrible dictatorship because Saddam had a screw loose. Horrible dictatorship is a standard form of government there.

One must admire his fair-mindedness, though. Not only would he not execute Saddam or Hitler, he wouldn't execute Bush or Blair either.

Although on second reading, he actually says "
Kill Hitler? You would have to be mad to do so.", whereas for Bush/Blair he merely "shall not be among those pressing for them to be hanged". So perhaps we should be not so much admiring his fair-mindedness as his restraint.

the American government's enthusiastic arming of Saddam before they switched loyalties

What a tool. Iraqi Order of Battle was overwhelmingly Soviet Block in origin. Tanks (T-55,T62,T72), APCs , aircraft (Migs), helicopters, SAMs, down to rifles(AK-47s). And what wasn't Soviet was French and Chinese. http://www.parapundit.com/archiv...ves/ 001853.html

"He wouldn't execute Bush or Blair either."

Yes, and this is quite fair, isn't it? (He has forgotten the name Putin ...)

Someone tell Dawkins that Castro, Mugabe, Charles Taylor, Omar al-Bashir, Kim Jong il, Seyed Ali Khamanei etc. etc. are still alive. If some of them die before he gets a chance to interview them, he shouldn't worry, there will always be a few of them somewhere in the world.

That's a valid objection, but I'm not sure I entirely agree. The problem is that justice can be served in a number of ways. Imgaine a less incendiary example: there are 1000 people convicted of drug related crimes who, according to the law, must be punished. Now there are a couple ways the punishment can be meted out-- a certain amount of time in prison, for example, or treatment for drug abuse in some clinic. There's a scientfic question to be asked there: which punishment has the best outcome, i.e. which reduces the future probability of being arrested the most. The experiment is obvious-- assign 500 people to each punishment and follow them for X number of years, but it implies that scientific questions are considered in the selection of the punishment.

Now, this is not exactly analogous to Saddam's case, but still, I'm not so quick to discard scientific value in the calculation of a punishment.

As an actual physician who does research, all I can say is: Holy shit, what an appallingly unethical idea! There would be no way to design such an experiment without significant coercion or the offering of significant incentives to prisoners. Your idea would violate much of the system of human subjects protections built up over the years, as embodied in the Belmont Report and the Common Rule.

As an actual physician who does research, all I can say is: Holy shit, what an appallingly unethical idea! There would be no way to design such an experiment without significant coercion or the offering of significant incentives to prisoners. Your idea would violate much of the system of human subjects protections built up over the years, as embodied in the Belmont Report and the Common Rule.

well shit. I guess that's why I stay away from actual people--I've never had an instinct for predicting what others will consider appalling or unethical.

but don't people now get the option of punishment X or punishment Y and rehab in some situations? Am I just imagining this? Would it be that much of a stretch to not give that choice and assign people randomly?

I'm with JCR.

According to a study produced last year by the UN (not the most pro-US group) and quoted on John Ray's blog, the proportion of all arms and ammo furnished to Iraq after Saddam's ascension to power was, in combination with the UK, just a bit over 2% of the total furnished by a long list of suppliers. It's been a while since I read it but my recollection is that the preponderance came from USSR, France, and Germany. Part of 2+% is a far cry from the picture painted by the usual susupects in the MSM.

An overlooked reason for executing Hussein rather than studying him: it prevents his becoming a rallying point or an object of a restoration movement. This goes into the same pot as "get rid of him before he spills the beans about the rest of the gang" as a "real" reason the execution was done in haste. Which does not make it a bad reason.

But the primary reason for executing murderers is to demonstrate that the State takes seiously its commitment to protect the fundamental human right of its citizens to life, without which there are no other human rights. After due process, to execute those purposeful murderers exacts an ultimate price that tells individuals their lives are actually highly valued by their society. For this to be true (and for it to be a real deterrent) justice must be consistent and (relatively) swift.

If one can murder peoples, order children mutilated in front of their parents, and commit any of dozens of such barbarities against one's own people and others on a daily schedule for decades, and then wind up living out the rest of ones days provided of food, shelter, clothing, and your own personal pshrinks and historians should tell people that Dawkins and the rest who would perpetrate this upon the world hold the lives and suffering of entire nations in complete contempt.

Not surprising, though, given their political antecedents.

Orac, as an actual physician who does research, are you familiar with any of the penal schemes that allow convicts to be assigned to treatment or rehabilitation programs rather than serve jailtime? I'm pretty sure we keep track of the results without violating any ethical standards. I don't think Razib was suggesting anything that couldn't pass ethical muster...

Oops, I meant p-ter...

and then wind up living out the rest of ones days provided of food, shelter, clothing, and your own personal pshrinks and historians should tell people that Dawkins and the rest who would perpetrate this upon the world hold the lives and suffering of entire nations in complete contempt. Not surprising, though, given their political antecedents.


Oh right, death penalty skeptics following in the footsteps of the nazis. What a load of horseshit.

Again, killing/hurting victimizers to make their victims feel better is not ethical or rational. (though for deterring future victimizers, it may be)