Life & Death on the Row and Iraq ...

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind". ~ Ghandi

Death is as certain as the sun rises and sets (The sign to the right is fitting). It's assured from the moment you breathe in air for the first time. Whether another man takes your life, you take your own or The Higher Power says it's your time to go, we're all really on death row. All of those reasons have some merit. Of course, another man taking your life is only justifiable in self-defense.

That said, I'm not so sure that a state or a man should have the right to enforce capital punishment. That's playing God. Let me rethink that. Maybe they should at least consider where the inmate is in his/her walk of life before they decided to kill them.

I haven't devoted too much attention to death row in recent or distant past. I just know that we (The US) just gave the maximum penalty to a 1,000th person in the last few weeks and that Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, founder of the Crips gang turned children's author, probably won't be with us too long past midnight. He's been sitting on death row since 1981 for killing four people in 1979.

I don't know the man, and no, I don't identify with him just because he's black. However, I'm not so sure that he deserves to be killed for slaying four others 26 years ago, which he denies he did. I think I could understand it if he were going to be a threat to society again. But Tookie - I don't know where this name came from and don't want to know - renounced his way of life, and he writes (exuse me, wrote) books to keep kids like him away from the "thug life." Even locked up, he probably does more justice alive than dead.

I can understand Timothy McVeigh's lethal injection because given the opportunity he would have gone Oklahoma City on another Midwest federal building, maybe in Kansas City. Osama bin Laden: I wouldn't be opposed to him being knocked off, and I don't think the majority of this world would disagree because he'll cause havoc at any given chance.

This man has done something positive with his life since he was found guilty of murder. But I can't discern what a proper punishment should be - maybe life in prison. A judge, jury and Arnold the gubenator have all decided death is just:

"Stanley Williams insists he is innocent, and that he will not and should not apologize or otherwise atone for the murders of the four victims in this case," the governor wrote.
"Without an apology and atonement for these senseless and brutal killings, there can be no redemption."

How do you atone for murder? With more execution? If Williams dies tonight, I think it makes it more evident that most of us are quite blind, as Ghandi said, to what we are truly here on Earth to do - especially the leader of our fearless country, the C-average college student.

Do you realize that 30,000 Iraqis, a conservative number at best, have died since 2002 per the dealings of one George Walker Bush? Plus over 2,000 American soldiers. I saw this on cnn.com today, and was just astonished. That's some Vietnam War-type numbers.

"There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for." ~Ghandi

Not to bash GWB, though I am, but now I can understand why the rest of the world hates America. He pre-empted the deaths of Americans by giving the OK to kill 30,000+ Iraqis. Today, Bush dared to compare the liberation of Iraq to the birth of the United States. Seriously. This is why the rest of the world looks at him in the light we look at Saddam and Osama - because the man is chiefly responsible for all of this death.

Yet, Arnold the gubenator, nor anyone else is going to look this man in the eye and say he deserves death for his actions. Well, at least no one in the United States. It would be nice if George had a moment of divine intervention tonight and decided it was OK for Tookie to live. It's in the Supreme Court's hands now. But even a word in the man's favor is the least the President could do with all the death he has caused in the last three years. Not going to happen, though.