“Civil Government does not consist in executions; but in making that provision for the instruction of youth and the support of age, as to exclude , as much as possible, profligacy from the one and despair from the other.”

In Baghdad last week a brutal dictator was hanged. For many, if not most, this was a just and deserved ending for a man whose own regard for human life sowed death and misery for millions of his own people, bringing an entire nation to its knees. If there is a case for the formalized, state-sanctioned execution of a human being, the killing of Saddam Hussein is a prime example.

And yet when a grainy video recording of his hanging emerges on the internet, complete with guards taunting him in his final moments with calls of “To hell!”, the execution, which in all cases should proceed with the tragic solemnity that any such event represents, loses some of righteous justification.

An “official” execution of another human being, even of a terrible and ruthless tyrant that arguably deserves it, should, as much as possible, remain a dignified affair – even sacred, as perverse as that may sound.

Execution is not random killing. It is not a senseless act of violence. When it is determined by the process of law that a person’s life is so abhorrent that it must end, it is, in fact, rendering what in other circumstances most consider to be the judgement of God.

When rendering such judgement, we are but a hare’s breath from becoming mere killers ourselves.

In such a moment, cries of “To Hell!” step across the line that we dance upon when putting a man to death. In human terms, the man is already condemned. He is to be no more of this world. Whatever may come of his soul once his body swings lifeless at the end of a rope is surely the realm of God.

It is for our own souls, and the soul of a nation, for which we should be concerned, when we presume to act as God and render his judgement.