CRUEL EXECUTIONS OF CHILDREN IN IRAN & SOMALIA

I tend to object to the Bush/Cheney attempt to demonize Iran and make it an "enemy." However, I certainly view Iran's use of the death penalty as egregiously wrong as I find it severely objectionable when carried out in the United States.

For a state, any state, to take the life of a person, even though that person has been adjudged to have committed some heinous act, is morally wrong and an immoral overreaching of a state's powers.

I refer to reports of the latest execution of a juvenile in Iran. The BBC reports:

"The New York-based Human Rights Watch said the Afghan man, identified as Gholamreza H, was hanged in Isfahan province on 30 October. He was 19 when the execution was carried out, but had been convicted for a murder he committed in November 2006 as a 17-year-old. .. . .

"Human Rights Watch says 26 juvenile offenders have been executed in Iran since January 2005, out of a worldwide total of 32 known executions."

Furthermore, I want to strenuously protest the stoning of a 13-year old girl in Somalia after being gang raped by three adult males.

Here is the BBC's account of the gruesome and cruel happening.

For this resurgence in primitive fundamentalist Islamic morality, I place the blame squarely on Bush and Cheney. It was these American leaders who overturned the government of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu several years ago by egging the Ethiopians, centuries old enemies of Somalians, to invade and occupy much of Somalia. Just at the time when a moderate Islamic government was restoring commerce and a normal course of living to Somalia, Bush and Cheney upset the whole equilibrium by their misplaced zeal against any Islamic form of government.

The result has been two years of armed conflict, shelling of civilians, disintegration of any civilized life, destruction of the city of Mogadishu, and total lawlessness. What then happens are outrages like this one where fundamentalist militants impose their savage morality on some unfortunate 13-year old child.