My conflicted feelings

The Jordanian government executed two prisoners today for the 2002 assassination of American Diplomat Laurence Foley. This is a strange story for me for several reasons. First, Foley's son, Mike, was a good friend, roommate, and co-worker of mine in college. Second, Mike's dad was working for USAID in Jordan on a project to bring clean water to parts of the city (at least that is what I remember). This seems like a strange target for assassination, other than the fact that he was an American. Third, it was this event that got Amanda and I talking again after we had not really talked too much after I left college.

However, this story is also a great challenge to my way of thinking. In the past, I was a little torn over my feelings towards the death penalty. Over the last few years, though, I have become a stronger opponent to the death penalty. This opposition is based on several thoughts. First, I'm not sure that killing someone because they killed someone serves as a good message. To me, it sounds like a government saying "you can't kill, but we can." Second, it does not serve as a remedy to the murder. The victim is not brought back, so it really doesn't achieve any goal. Finally, it does not work as a deterrent. The U.S. is one of the few "Western" countries that still has a death penalty and yet has higher murder rates than any other "Western" nation. In fact, our murder rates are usually 4-5 times greater than the murder rates of European nations.

What makes this difficult is that I think these guys deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law, which means hanging in Jordan. Knowing what Larry was doing in Jordan and that he was a nice guy that wanted to help people makes it even worse. I envision these assholes dying on those ropes as justice served, but don't really feel any better about what happened. So there's the rub. If I ever had to face the challenge of a loved one being killed, I would probably want to find the person who did it and take out my anger on them, but what would that accomplish besides getting me in trouble? I understand killing someone in defense because that prevents the murder, but killing the perpetrator after the fact does not provide that protection. Tough call.