Wars and conflicts in the modern world

The United Nations defines "major wars" as military conflicts inflicting 1,000 battlefield deaths per year. In 1965*Aere/were 10 major wars under way. The new millennium began with much of the world consumea in armed conflict or cultivating an uncertain peace. As of mid-2005, there were eight Major Wars under way, with as many as two dozen "lesser" conflicts ongoing with varying degrees of intensity.

Most of these are civil or "intrastate" wars, fueled as much by racial, ethnic, or religious animosities as by ideological fervor. Most victims are civilians, a feature that distinguishes modem conflicts. During World War I, civilians made up fewer than 5 percent of all casualties. Today, 75 percent or more of those killed or wounded in wars are non-combatants.

Africa, to a greater extent than any other continent, is afflicted by war. Africa has been marred by more than 20 major civil wars since 1960. Rwanda, Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Liberia, and Burundi are among those countries that have recently suffered serious armed conflict.

War has caused untold economic and social damage to the countries of Africa. Food production is impossible in conflict areas, and famine often results. Widespread conflict has condemned many of Africa's children to lives of misery and, in certain cases, has threatened the existence of traditional African cultures.

The problem of war and piece has become a thorny issue since the American tragedy which happened on the 11 of September 2001. This was the beginning of the so-called War on Terrorism" or "Long War" - an ongoing campaign with the stated goal of "ending international terrorism," launched in direct response to the September 11,2001 attacks on the U.S., for which ai-Qaeda claimed responsibility. Although the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled President Saddam Hussein was made up of allies in me "War on Terror" the current Iraq war (and its alleged links to the larger campaign against terrorism) have been highly controversial. The Bush Administration has been accused of acting in violation of international law, human rights, and the U.S. Constitution in its execution of the campaign, particularly with regard to the internment of prisoners of war (or "illegal combatants") in its military prison at Guantanamo _Bay, Cuba.

There are other hot spots on the world map that need to be mentioned. Thus, the Middle East has always been the most militarized region in the world. Given the vast energy resources that form the backbone of western economies, influence and involvement in the Middle East has been of paramount importance for the former and current imperial and super powers, including France, Britain, USA and the former Soviet Union. Arabians see US influence as a major reason for the current problems. This has led to a rise in Islamic military acts of terrorism and anti-west sentiment (HacTpoeHH*). The West is first and foremost interested in the energy resources of the Middle East (oil). For this reason it has placed corrupt Arab leaders into positions of power and supported the overthrow of those that were not seen as favorable. Other vivid examples of the Middle East conflicts are: US war in Iraq, The Israeli-Palestinian conflict (it is perhaps one of the most sensitive issues in the Middle East The Palestinian people have been denied a right to their land/Recent events have destroyed the "peace" processes andj extremist sentiments on both sides are <& the rise again. The US mainstream media provides a very biased view of Palestinians. Arab leaders too are criticized for not truly representing their people. The West have heavily armed and backed the mighty Israel. To the West, Israel is an ally only because of the oil interests in the Middle East region.) and others.

Today the world is experiencing a profound break In the whole international relations structure. Every people and each state have to take more responsibility for their own destiny. Each one should be able to find the basis for stability in order to avoid acute social problems -military clashes, national and confessional hostilities.

It was with disbelief and shock that people around the world saw the news footage of the events on September 11, 2001. The subsequent bombing of Afghanistan to attack Osama Bin

Laden's Al Quaeda terrorist network and the Taliban for harboring them has also led to a mixture of political, social and economic reaction around the world. Many today are frustrated at the US foreign policy on all kinds of issues. But In spite of the growing tensions one must remember that the ultimate weakness of violence is that Instead of diminishing evil It multiplies it Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hatred.

Non-violence is more powerful than all the armaments in the world. Conflict prevention, mediation, humanitarian Intervention and demobilization are among the tools needed to guarantee the success of development assistance programs. Nutrition and education programs, for example, cannot succeed in a nation at war. Billions of dollars of development assistance have been virtually wasted in war-ravaged countries such as Liberia, Somalia, and Sudan. Therefore one of the primary goals of the UN is to prevent and to settle all kinds of conflicts by peaceful means, by means of negotiations, mediation, establishment of peace-keeping fortes, granting political asylum and promoting international disarmament.

Throughout human history, there have been many threats to the security of nations. These threats have brought about large-scale losses of life, the destruction of property, widespread illness and injury, the displacement of large numbers of people, and devastating economic loss.

Nowadays on everybody's lips we hear the words: terrorism, war, conflict, revolution, civil disorder. One of the main orientations of policy of every country is to protect its citizens and secure them with a peaceful settlement of the world problems.

Unfortunately political leader not always can evade different conflicts that sometimes can lead to war.

The type of conflict varies widely

· Secession (отделение) of a territory to form a new sovereign state

· Dominance of territory or resources by various ethnic groups

· Imposition of a particular form of government, such as democracy, theocracy, or anarchy

· Economic deprivation (лишение) of a population

· Opposition to a domestic government or occupying army

Nowadays one of the burning issues of the day is the war in Iraq.

The Iraq War (March 20, 2003 to present), sometimes known as the Second Gulf War, is an ongoing war that began with the United States-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. The US-led coalition overthrew Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and occupied Iraq, causing ongoing asymmetric warfare with the Iraqi insurgency and the civil war between Sunni and Shia Iraqis. Whether Iraq should be considered part of the American War on Terrorism is debated, although the war was authorized by the U.S. Congress to help "prosecute the war on terrorism" in October 2002. Nearly two years after the Hussein regime was toppled and major combat operations ended, U.S. and coalition troops are still fighting an Iraqi insurgency. The causes and consequences of the war remain controversial.

About a month ago Former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed by hanging on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, December 30, 2006 at 0605 local time (0305 UTC). He was convicted of crimes against humanity following his trial and conviction for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982 in retaliation for an assassination attempt against him.

The execution took place at the Iraqi army base Camp Justice in Kadhimiya. CNN reported that celebrations broke out at the execution location after Saddam was dead, and that people were "dancing around the body".

Reactions to Saddam's death were varied. Some strongly supported the execution, particularly those personally affected by Saddam's actions as leader. Some of these victims, however, wished to see him brought to trial for his other actions, alleged to have resulted in a much greater number of deaths than those he was convicted for. Some believed the execution would boost morale in Iraq, while others feared it would incite further violence.

Another burning issue takes place in Spain in Pais Basco.

ETA (Basque for "Basque Homeland and Freedom"; [ɛːta]), is an armed Basque nationalist separatist organization founded in 1959. It grew rapidly from a group advocating traditional cultural ways to an armed group demanding Basque independence. Its ideology is Marxist-Leninist.

All formulations of ETA's goals have centered on sovereignty and self-determination for the Basque Country. ETA's motto is "Keep up on both". This refers to the two figures in the ETA symbol, a snake (representing politics) wrapped around an axe (representing armed fight).

ETA is listed as a terrorist organization by the United Nations, European Union and (since 2003) the United States in their relevant watch lists. ETA has committed approximately 900 killings and dozens of kidnappings. More than 500 ETA militants are held in prison in Spain and France. On March 22, 2006 the organization declared a "permanent ceasefire." ETA broke the ceasefire with a car bomb attack on December 30, 2006 at Barajas International Airport, Madrid killing two Ecuadorian immigrants.

We must not forget about country. For a month all newspapers were writing about a conflict raised between Belarus and Russia.

Gazprom is raising prices closer to market levels after years of selling gas cheaply to former Soviet republics. The company is demanding Belarus pay $105 per 1,000 cubic meters in 2007 -- $75 in cash and $30 in shares of its gas pipeline operator, Beltransgaz.

The price would increase annually and by 2011 reach a market-style European price. For the next four years, Belarus would pay a portion of the cost in shares of Beltransgaz.

Optimists on the contrary state that some things could be done to change Human Nature. For instance: education (humans are to be educated with love of peace and hatred of war), cultural exchange (better understanding, dialogue between peoples, civilizations. The notion that what is “ours” is necessarily in conflict with what is “theirs” is false and dangerous. We can love and respect what we are without hating what we are not.) Furthermore, if war is caused by human nature then so is peace.

There is great debate over why wars happen, even when most people do not want them to. Representatives of many different academic disciplines have attempted to explain war. Historians tend to describe wars as being like traffic accidents. There are some conditions and situations that make them more likely but there can be no system for predicting where and when each one will occur. Social scientists criticize this approach arguing that at the beginning of every war some leader makes a conscious decision and that they cannot be seen as purely accidental. Psychologists have argued that human beings, especially men, are inherently violent. While this violence is repressed in normal society it needs the occasional outlet provided by war. This combines with other notions, such as displacement where a person transfers their grievances into bias and hatred against other ethnic groups, nations, or ideologies. While these theories can explain why wars occur, they do not explain when or how they occur. In addition, they raise the question why there are sometimes long periods of peace and other eras of unending war. They try to prove that peace does not really exist. Periods that are seen as peaceful are actually periods of preparation for a later war or when war is suppressed by a state of great power. In his fictional book “1984” George Orwell talks about war being used as one of many ways to distract people. War inspires fear and hate among the people of a nation, and gives them a 'legitimate' enemy upon whom they can focus this fear and hate. Thus the people are prevented from seeing that their true enemy is in fact their own repressive government. By this theory, war is another 'opiate of the masses' by which a state controls its people and prevents revolution. Several anthropologists take a very different view of war. They see it as fundamentally cultural, learned by nurture rather than nature. Thus if human societies could be reformed, war would disappear. The acceptance of war is inculcated into each of us by the religious, ideological, and nationalistic surroundings in which we live. Another school of thought argues that war can be seen as an outgrowth of economic competition in a competitive international system. In this view, wars begin as a pursuit of new markets, of natural resources, and of wealth. Unquestionably economic reasons could be a cause of some wars, for example the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in pursuit of oil. This theory has also been applied to many other conflicts including the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

War seems as old as human society. The earliest city states and empires in Mesopotamia became the first to employ standing armies. Organization and structure has since been central to warfare, as illustrated by the success of highly disciplined troops of the Roman Empire. The war has been changing through the ages. As well as organizational change, technology has played a central role in the evolution of warfare. Armies with iron weapons easily defeated armies armed with bronze. Invention of new weapon created for warfare plays an important role in advances of military conflicts. Modern technology has greatly increased the potential cost and destructiveness of war. In fact, military conflicts prosecute Humanity. Nowadays ethnic and religious conflicts, genocide, inter-ethnic violence and separatism inside one country play the leading role on the world’s military scene.

Among the examples of modern conflicts is The Balkan conflict which took away the lives of thousands people. The former Yugoslav Federation comprised Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. For decades, Yugoslavia was held together by the dictatorship of Marshal Tito. With his death in 1980, the union of mutually hostile ethnic groups was in danger of coming apart. The main reason for hostility was the difference in religious beliefs. Serbs are Orthodox Christians, Croats are Roman Catholic and Bosnia’s Muslims are Islam believers who adopted their faith during centuries of Ottoman Turkish rule. War erupted in June 1991 after Slovenia and Croatia declared independence. Slovenia's war ended in less than a month with fewer than 70 dead. Croatia's war of secession against Serb rebels backed by the Yugoslav army lasted six months and killed an estimated 10,000 people. A tenuous cease-fire took hold in January 1992.And the same year Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for Independence. In April 1992, Bosnian Serbs rebelled against Bosnia's independence and an estimated 200,000 people have died and millions lost their homes in their war against the Muslim-led government. In fact, all sides during the series of civil wars in Yugoslavia have been accused of “ethnic cleansing” but the rebel Serbs in Bosnia did most of it against Bosnian Muslims. This included torture, mass murders, sexual attacks, forced expulsions and other acts of terrorism against civilians and soldiers alike.

Modern wars and military conflicts are closely connected with genocide (the deliberate and systematic destruction of racial, religious, political or ethnic group). The example of sheer genocide is Rwanda conflict of 1994. Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of central Africa. It is bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. It is best known to the outside world for the 1994 Rwandan genocide that resulted in the deaths of up to one million people. Before this, it was known mostly as the habitat of mountain gorillas. Prior to European colonization, Rwanda was the site of one of the region's most complex monarchical systems. In 1895 Rwanda became a German province. The Germans, however, were at first completely dependent on the existing government. The German authority kept the native administration system by applying the same type of indirect rule established by the British Empire in the Ugandan kingdoms. After Germany's loss in World War I, the protectorate was taken over by Belgium with a League of Nations mandate. Belgian rule in the region was far more direct and harsh than that of the Germans. However, the Belgian colonizers did realize the value of native rule. Backed by Christian churches, the Belgians used the minority Tutsi upper class over lower classes of Tutsis and Hutus. Belgian-forced labor policies and stringent taxes were mainly enforced by the Tutsi upper class, whom the Belgians used as buffers against people's anger, thus further polarizing the Hutu and the Tutsi. After World War II Rwanda became a UN trust territory with Belgium as the administrative authority. Through a series of processes, including several reforms, the assassination of King Mutara III Charles in 1959 the Hutu gradually gained more and more power until, upon Rwanda's independence in 1962, the Hutu held virtually all power. In 1990, the Tutsi-dominated Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Rwanda from Uganda. During the course of the fighting, top Rwandese government officials, mainly Hutu began secretly training young men into informal armed bands called interehamwe ("coming together"). Government officials also launched a radio station that began anti-Tutsi propaganda. The military government responded to the RPF invasion with pogroms against Tutsis, whom it claimed were trying to re-enslave the Hutus. In 1992 the government and the RPF signed a cease-fire agreement known as the Arusha accords in Arusha, Tanzania to form a power sharing government, but fighting between the two sides continued. The United Nations sent a peacekeeping force named the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR).UNAMIR was vastly underfunded and under-staffed. On April 6 1994, President Habyarimana was assassinated when his Falcon 50 trijet was shot down while landing in Kigali. It remains unclear who was responsible for the assassination – most credible sources point to the presidential guard, spurred by Hutu nationalists fearful of losing power, although others believe that Tutsi rebels were responsible, possibly with the help of Belgian mercenaries. Over the next three months, the military and interehamwe militia groups killed between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates in the Rwandan Genocide. The RPF continued to advance on the capital, and occupied the northern, the east and the southern parts of the country by June. U.N. member states refused to answer UNAMIR's requests for increased troops and money. On July 4th, 1994, the war ended as the RPF entered the capital Kigali. In the resulting Great Lakes refugee crisis over 2 million Hutus fled the country after the war, fearing Tutsi retribution. In 1996, Rwanda and Uganda invaded eastern Congo in an effort to eliminate the interahamwe groups operating there and to gain influence in the region. Today, Rwandans continue to struggle with the legacy of genocide. 2004 marked the ten year anniversary with a ceremony in Kigali. The current Rwandan government is led by Paul Kagame.The first post-war presidential and legislative elections were held in August and September 2003, respectively.

I can’t but say some words about the new phenomenon of the XXI century- War on Terrorism. The exact definition of terrorism is highly controversial. According to a working definition, it is the unconventional use of violence against civilians for political gain. "Terrorist attacks" are usually characterized as "indiscriminate," "targeting of civilians," or executed "with disregard" for human life. The term "terrorism" is often used to emphasize that the political violence of an enemy is immoral, meaningless, and unjustified. An interesting fact is that terrorists rarely identify themselves as such, and instead typically use terms that refer to their ideological or ethnic struggle, such as: separatist, freedom fighter, liberator, militant, guerrilla (from guerra Spanish for "war" meaning "small war"), rebel etc.During much of the 20th century, the term terrorism was primarily applied to nationalist movements of various types. Most of them were separatist movements, seeking to create a new independent nation-state on the territory of a larger, existing state. Classic counter-terrorist operations were a feature of the decolonization in Africa and the Middle East. Some of these campaigns, such as the Mau Mau and the FLOSY, were well known in the Western media, but unlike Al-Qaeda, their violence was remote and confined to the disputed colony. However, Irish republican groups did consistently target England, and the Basque ETA often targeted Madrid and other non-Basque parts of Spain. The motives of these groups derive from their nationalist ideology, and an underlying territorial conflict about which state should control what. In this respect, no separate theory of the causes is required, since violence is the standard instrument of geopolitical change. Thus, the violence resulting from territorial conflicts is frequently considered inevitable.

The world community today is discussing the possible militant threats and the importance of winning the war on terrorism. The ideology known as Islamic radicalism, militant Jihadism, or Islamo-fascism – different

30. Capital punishment: pros and cons

Throughout human history, there have been many threats to the security of nations. These threats have brought about large-scale losses of life, the destruction of property, widespread illness and injury, the displacement of large numbers of people, and devastating economic loss.

Nowadays on everybody's lips we hear the words: terrorism, war, conflict, revolution, civil disorder. People are very threatened. That is why the government tries to improve the security system and makes new laws.

One of the laws that has been disputable for many years is capital punishment.

Capital punishment, or the death penalty, is the execution of a convicted criminal by the state as punishment for crimes known as capital crimes or capital offences. Historically, the execution of criminals and political opponents was used by nearly all societies - both to punish crime and to suppress political dissent. Among democratic countries around the world, most European (all of the European Union), Latin American, and many Pacific Area states (including Australia, New Zealand) have abolished capital punishment, while the United States, Guatemala, and most of the Caribbean as well as some democracies in Asia and Africa retain it. Among nondemocratic countries, the use of the death penalty is common but not universal.

In most places that practice capital punishment today, the death penalty is reserved as a punishment for premeditated murder, espionage, treason, or as part of military justice. In some countries with a Muslim majority, sexual crimes, including adultery and sodomy, carry the death penalty, as do religious crimes such as apostasy from Islam, the formal renunciation of one's religion. In many countries that use the death penalty, drug trafficking is also a capital offense. In China human trafficking and serious cases of corruption are also punished by the death penalty. In militaries around the world courts-martial have imposed death sentences for offenses such as cowardice, desertion, insubordination, and mutiny.

Capital punishment is a questionable issue. Supporters of capital punishment argue that it prevents crime and is an appropriate punishment for the crime of murder. Opponents of capital punishment argue that it does not discourage criminals more than life imprisonment, violates human rights, leads to executions of some who are wrongfully convicted, and discriminates against minorities and the poor. It is also argued that capital punishment is a hypocritical punishment, especially in murder cases, as it implies killing a certain individual is wrong before exacting the same action upon them.

Belarus is the only country in Europe, bar Greece which reserves the right to execute criminals in extreme circumstances, in which capital punishment is still permitted. There have been no documented cases of its use since gaining independence in 1991.

Capital punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment and since ancient times, it has been used for a wide variety of offences. The Bible prescribes death for murder and many other crimes including kidnapping and witchcraft. By 1500 in England, only major felonies carried the death penalty - treason, murder, larceny, burglary, rape, and arson. By 1700, however, Parliament had enacted many new capital offences and hundreds of persons were being put to death each year.

Reform of the death penalty began in Europe by the 1750’s and was championed by academics such as the Italian jurist, Cesare Beccaria, the French philosopher, Voltaire, and the English law reformers, Jeremy Bentham and Samuel Romilly. They argued that the death penalty was needlessly cruel, overrated as a deterrent and occasionally imposed in fatal error. Along with Quaker leaders and other social reformers, they defended life imprisonment as a more rational alternative.

By the 1850’s, these reform efforts began to bear fruit. Venezuela (1853) and Portugal (1867) were the first nations to abolish the death penalty altogether. In the United States, Michigan was the first state to abolish it for murder in 1847. Today, it is virtually abolished in all of Western Europe and most of Latin America.
Britain effectively abolished capital punishment in 1965.

In America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (except Israel) most countries still retain the death penalty for certain crimes and impose it with varying frequency.

In 2004, lethal injection replaced hanging and shooting as the two most common methods of execution followed by beheading. Lethal injection, which is almost universal in America, is also used extensively now in China, the Philippines, Thailand and Guatemala. Electrocution and the gas chamber are used only in America and seem to be disappearing slowly – the inmate has to elect to die by these methods. Stoning for sexual offences, including adultery, may still occur in some Islamic countries. China, with a quarter of the world's population, carries out the most executions for a wide variety of offences.

Should the death penalty be banned as a form of punishment?

The United States remains in the minority of nations in the world that still uses death as penalty for certain crimes. Many see the penalty as barbaric and against American values. Others see it as a very important tool in fighting violent pre-meditated murder. Two things have once again brought this issue to national debate. One is the release of some highly publicized studies that show a number of innocents had been put to death. The second is the issue of terrorism and the need to punish its perpetrators.

Yes

Financial costs to taxpayers of capital punishment is several times that of keeping someone in prison for life. Most people don't realize that carrying out one death sentence costs 2-5 times more than keeping that same criminal in prison for the rest of his life. How can this be? It has to do with the endless appeals, additional required procedures, and legal wrangling that drag the process out. It's not unusual for a prisoner to be on death row for 15-20 years. Judges, attorneys, court reporters, clerks, and court facilities all require a substantial investment by the taxpayers.

It is barbaric and violates the "cruel and unusual" clause in the Bill of Rights. Whether it's a firing squad, electric chair, gas chamber, lethal injection, or hanging, it's barbaric to allow state-sanctioned murder before a crowd of people. We condemn people like Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il when they murder their own people while we continue to do the same (although our procedures for allowing it are obviously more thorough). The 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prevents the use of "cruel and unusual punishment". Many would interpret the death penalty as violating this restriction.

The endless appeals and required additional procedures clog our court system. The U.S. court system goes to enormous lengths before allowing a death sentence to be carried out. All the appeals, motions, hearings, briefs, etc. monopolize much of the time of judges, attorneys, and other court employees as well as use up courtrooms & facilities. This is time & space that could be used for other unresolved matters. The court system is tremendously backed up. This would help move things along.

We as a society have to move away from the "eye for an eye" revenge mentality if civilization is to advance. The "eye for an eye" mentality will never solve anything. A revenge philosophy inevitably leads to an endless cycle of violence. Why do you think the Israeli-Palestine conflict has been going on for 50+ years? Why do you think gang violence in this country never seems to end? It is important to send a message to society that striking back at your enemy purely for revenge will always make matters worse.

It sends the wrong message: why kill people who kill people to show killing is wrong. Yes, we want to make sure there is accountability for crime and an effective deterrent in place; however, the death penalty has a message of "You killed one of us, so we'll kill you". The state is actually using a murder to punish someone who committed a murder. Does that make sense?

Life in prison is a worse punishment and a more effective deterrent. For those of you who don't feel much sympathy for a murderer, keep in mind that death may be too good for them. With a death sentence, the suffering is over in an instant. With life in prison, the pain goes on for decades. Prisoners are confined to a cage and live in an internal environment of rape and violence where they're treated as animals. And consider terrorists. Do you think they'd rather suffer the humiliation of lifelong prison or be "martyred" by a death sentence? Other countries (especially in Europe) would have a more favorable image of America. It's no secret that anti-Americanism is rampant around the world. One of the reasons is America's continued use of the death penalty. We're seen as a violent, vengeful nation for such a policy. This is pretty much the same view that Europeans had of America when we continued the practice of slavery long after it had been banned in Europe.

Some jury members are reluctant to convict if it means putting someone to death. Many states require any jury members to be polled during the pre-trial examination to be sure they have the stomach to sentence someone to death before they're allowed to serve. Even if they're against the death penalty, they still may lie in order to get on the panel. The thought of agreeing to kill someone even influences some jury members to acquit rather than risk the death. Some prosecutors may go for a lesser charge rather than force juries into a death-or-acquit choice. Obviously, in all these situations, justice may not be served.

The prisoner's family must suffer from seeing their loved one put to death by the state. One victim's innocent family is obviously forced to suffer from a capital murder, but by enforcing a death sentence, you force another family to suffer. Why double the suffering when we don't have to? The possibility exists that innocent men and women may be put to death. There are several documented cases where DNA testing showed that innocent people were put to death by the government. We have an imperfect justice system where poor defendants are given minimal legal attention by often lesser qualified individuals. We can't risk mistakes.

Mentally ill patients may be put to death. Many people are simply born with defects to their brain that cause them to act a certain way. No amount of drugs, schooling, rehabilitation, or positive reinforcement will change them. Is it fair that someone should be murdered just because they were unlucky enough to be born with a brain defect. It creates sympathy for the monsterous perpetrators of the crimes. Criminals usually are looked down upon by society. People are disgusted by the vile, unconscionable acts they commit and feel tremendous sympathy for the victims of murder, rape, etc. However, the death penalty has a way of shifting sympathy away from the victims and to the criminals themselves. An excellent example is the 2005 execution of former gang leader "Tookie" Williams. This is a man who founded the notorious Crips gang, which has a long legacy of robbery, assault, and murder. This is a man who was convicted with overwhelming evidence of the murder of 4 people at a restaurant, some of whom he shot in the back and then laughed at the sounds they made as they died. This is a man who never even took responsiblity for the crimes or apologized to the victims -- NOT ONCE! These victims had kids and spouses, but instead of sympathy for them, sympathy shifted to Tookie. Candlelight vigils were held for him. Websites like savetookie.org sprung up. Protests and a media circus ensued trying to prevent the execution, which eventually did take place -- 26 years after the crime itself! There are many cases like this, which makes a mockery of the evil crimes these degenerates commit.

It is useless in that it doesn't bring the victim back to life. Perhaps the biggest reason to ban the death penalty is that it doesn't change the fact that the victim is gone and will never come back. Hate, revenge, and anger will never cure the emptiness of a lost loved one. Forgiveness is the only way to start the healing process, and this won't happen in a revenge-focused individual.

No The death penalty gives closure to the victim's families who have suffered so much. Some family members of crime victims may take years or decades to recover from the shock and loss of a loved one. Some may never recover. One of the things that helps hasten this recovery is to achieve some kind of closure. Life in prison just means the criminal is still around to haunt the victim. A death sentence brings finality to a horrible chapter in the lives of these family members.

It creates another form of crime deterrent. Crime would run rampant as never before if there wasn't some way to deter people from committing the acts. Prison time is an effective deterrent, but with some people, more is needed. Prosecutors should have the option of using a variety of punishments in order to minimize crime. Justice is better served. The most fundamental principle of justice is that the punishment should fit the crime. When someone plans and brutally murders another person, doesn't it make sense that the punishment for the perpetrator also be death?

Our justice system shows more sympathy for criminals than it does victims.It's time we put the emphasis of our criminal justice system back on protecting the victim rather than the accused. Remember, a person who's on death row has almost always committed crimes before this. A long line of victims have been waiting for justice. We need justice for current and past victims. It provides a deterrent for prisoners already serving a life sentence. What about people already sentenced to life in prison. What's to stop them from murdering people constantly while in prison? What are they going to do--extend his sentence? Sure, they can take away some prison privileges, but is this enough of a deterrent to stop the killing? What about a person sentenced to life who happens to escape? What's to stop him from killing anyone who might try to bring him in or curb his crime spree?

DNA testing can now effectively eliminate uncertainty as to a person's guilt or innocence. One of the biggest arguments against the death penalty is the possibility of error. Sure, we can never completely eliminate all uncertainty, but nowadays, it's about as close as you can get. DNA testing is over 99 percent effective. And even if DNA testing didn't exist, the trial and appeals process is so thorough it's next to impossible to convict an innocent person. Remember, a jury of 12 members must unanimously decide there's not even a reasonable doubt the person is guilty. The number of innocent people that might somehow be convicted is no greater than the number of innocent victims of the murderers who are set free.

Prisoner parole or escapes can give criminals another chance to kill. Perhaps the biggest reason to keep the death penalty is to prevent the crime from happening again. The parole system nowadays is a joke. Does it make sense to anyone outside the legal system to have multiple "life" sentences + 20 years or other jiverish? Even if a criminal is sentenced to life without possibility of parole, he still has a chance to kill while in prison, or even worse, escape and go on a crime/murder spree.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 4064