As you’ve no doubt already heard, Saddam Hussein was put to death by hanging last night.

I am not going to debate the validity of his guilt.  The man was a monster by any definition of the word.  There has never been a doubt that he practiced genocide, turned his own state’s weapons against its own people, used nonconventional weapons against neighboring states and those he called enemies, utilized torture and horrible acts of cruelty to squelch dissent, and generally worked to make his life one in which Hitler himself would have been proud.

I am not going to debate the death penalty.  It is a barbaric practice that teaches vengeance instead of justice, provides no opportunity for rehabilitation or remorse, generates nothing akin to closure (and what a disgusting thought it is when people say that), demonstrates murder isn’t wrong like we tell children but is instead a useful tool when we call it justice (and what a horrible offense to real justice it is to call killing someone by that name), and ultimately serves no purpose in society (if it did, why do people still commit capital offenses?).  Likewise, state-sponsored murder has taken the lives of far too many innocent people.  Because of its finality, there is no hope for those put to death for crimes they did not commit since proving their innocence will not free them from their punishment.  Besides, I think Mahatma Gandhi had it right when he said, “An eye for an eye – and the whole world goes blind.”

But those aren’t the points of this post.

What I will debate is the horrific and inhumane jubilation I’ve seen across the blogosphere today in response to his death.

I cannot believe the large number of people who have posted celebratory entries regarding this event.  In fact, some people were posting brutish nastiness as early as last night as their spite and malice welled up on a foundation of joy based solely on the death of a human being.  Vitriolic and venomous, all of these people have demonstrated their troglodyte natures and desire to inflict suffering on others when it suits their covet for ending life.

Several blogs have already been removed from my blog list because of this.  It is one thing to feel the death penalty is right and to feel justice has been served by seeing Hussein put to death.  On those points we can disagree.

It’s something else entirely to delight with primitive glee the enactment of capital punishment on anyone for any reason.  To stand and declare how thrilling it is to know a man has been hanged is to rend open your chest to show the world the empty cavity where a heart should have been.

For all of you who have found this a reason to party, may your inhumanity come back to haunt you a thousandfold.  You deserve no place among those of us who cherish mercy and love above death and destruction.  What you celebrate is your own heartlessness, your own bathing in the blood of others, an act in which you find excessive enjoyment only because you are callous, cruel, pitiless, unkind, and vicious brutes who find wonder in your own inhuman existences.  You are pathetic and gross.