American Views Abroad

 
Highlighting the news this week here was the execution that took place in California yesterday, the CIA, its flights to black sites, and its kidnapping of a German citizen. Early this morning one radio program's brief press review quoted papers which pointed out a link between legally sanctioned execution and the many reports of torture these past few years. One report claimed the United States is rather in a world of its own, beyond the rest of the democratic free world. Reading several US papers a day, I was surprised by finding two commentaries this week, one in the Boston Globe calling for the necessity of capital punishment and refuting the Catholic Bishops stand opposing it, and one in the NY Daily News claiming how California had it all ---- warm weather and capital punishment. The last comment was in reference to a second NYC policeman who was killed this week.

One could possibly get the impression crime, heinous, horrid crime, doesn't take place all over. It does and Germany has certainly had its share of, in particular, crimes against children recently. Here in Hamburg a nine year old girl was starved to death in a room where the window was sealed up to prevent any light from entering, with no heat or food, and next to the living room where the family cat was well taken care of. All this in an apartment building and no one was aware of what was going on until she died in a horrible way, trying to eat her own hair, weighing next to nothing. So, have there been calls for capital punishment to help prevent this from ever happening again? No. Are there crimes more hideous than those performed by parents on their own children? Perhaps, but it is difficult imaging which crime is the worst these days.

What would have happened if, instead of executing that man yesterday, he had spent the rest of his life in a cell with no chance of getting out? First, the rest of the world would never have heard about him on this level. Did the rest of the world hear about his victims or know anything about them? Next to nothing, except of the fact there were four of them. Will the victims' families find peace of mind now the 'justice has been served' or has all the high noon drama of the execution in the media just made them numb and re-opened old wounds? Second, it has brought other peoples opinion of the US down another notch, yet again. A little piece here, a great big piece there and sooner or later there isn't all that much left.

In Steve Lopez's Points West in the LA Times from A Barbaric End to a Barbaric Life, he writes:

'And yet, watching Williams put to death Tuesday morning by agents of the government --- his execution sanctioned in a country where godliness and virtue are synonymous, even as torture and execution are defended --- made me all the more certain that capital punishment is barbaric. .....Is life in a cage not enough to satisfy our puritanical beliefs or lust for blood? Apparently not. Modern as we are, we still live by the law of an eye for an eye --- as long as it doesn't get too messy.'
www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez14dec14,0,6640967.column?coll=la-home-headlines.
- posted by Gloria @ 5:12 PM