May the Good Lord deliver us.
Actually what John Taylor wrote was "From Hull, from Halifax, from Hell, ‘tis thus,
From all these three, Good Lord deliver us." but that isn't quite so snappy and doesn't seem to have stood the test of time. Both however tell us that Halifax and Hull weren't exactly looked upon as nice places. I lived in Halifax for many years and although it is undoubtedly a shadow of its former self it is in fact a beautiful town. Stunning stone buildings nestling against a backdrop of the most spectacular hills in England. So why should the Good Lord deliver us from such an idyllic northern town? Because they killed people there. Halifax was famed for the almost zealous nature it applied to executing criminals.
Ah, I hear you say as the penny drops. Today we shall be mainly ranting about Capital Punishment.
Indeed I will.
A Head of State, forcibly removed from power, found guilty of a capital crime and executed by his former subjects mere days after his sentence was passed. It didn't work for Charles the First and it certainly won't work for Saddam Hussein.
Even if we discount the facts that Saddam's power base was in fact created by the western world to act as a buffer between us and the fanatical Islamic Iran, even if we discount the fact that the allied invasion of Iraq was not sanctioned by the United Nations, even if we discount the fact that the Chief Judge had to be replaced after he was forced to resign after accusations that he was too lenient, even if we discount the fact that we have removed the only source of information about other crimes against humanity in Iraq, it simply will not work.
Removing him from power did not stop the violence, making him a martyr certainly isn't going to help.
The public attitude towards Charles I changed overnight when he was executed. From being a man who was willing to defy God's will by ignoring the obvious judgement of having lost the war to being a martyr, killed by ungodless men.
The thing we should look at is the fact that Charles was not thought of as being Godly, at least not by those that removed him from power. However when a book of his thoughts and meditations was published shortly after his death it changed that.
Saddam was not a devout man, or so we would think if we believe the spin we have been fed, yet he died midway through reciting the Shahada as any good Muslim would in his place. How long will it be before he is held up by extremists as a true martyr of the faith, feasting in Heaven surrounded by virgins?
Not long I would say.
The violence will continue, it will almost certainly intensify, more allied troops will die and maybe one day, if we are lucky, Iraq will simply be another Islamic state where people hate the Great Satan of the west.
Maybe, just maybe, if we had put him in prison for the rest of his natural life would we have got closer to solving the problem we have created in Iraq, but then maybe not. Maybe executing the ex head of state by hanging, on the first day of Eid al-Adha, the premier Muslim celebration, the Feast of Sacrifice was actually a good idea.
But then maybe not.