Tejwantji, your post fills me with confusion, so if you will humour me, I would like to clarify.
Harry ji,
Let me give it another shot. No pun intended.
By mistaken identity, I mean the mistaking of a Sikh for a Muslim. But here is where I am confused, the family did not wish to be judge, jury and executioner, but they had no need to be, that is what the courts and the federal facilities are there for.
It does not matter. Mistaken identity out of ignorance which results in a heinous murder is wrong. Hatred is hatred. Period.
Then perhaps you will join me in my distaste that some murderers and terrorists are celebrated at the very highest authority that exists in Sikhi.Perhaps you can explain why the shooting of an unarmed woman, by men that were paid to protect her, has resulted in these men being honoured and lauded?
I am in total agreement with your above post starting from Bhindranwale, I must add.
I have never mentioned vengeance, but I do believe in justice. My only support for the death penalty is to protect the innocents that would suffer if a certain type of person were allowed to live.
Justice is a very subjective thing and how killing someone will protect the innocents from suffering? Life without parole can do the same or may help the victims heal because they know the person is paying the price with his/her every breath till the last breath which may take years. This is the true punishment for the crimes committed in my opinion. Killing the criminal acts as a saving grace.
For the record, the crime you have mentioned, I think it is right this was changed to life,however, let us talk about say Saddam, the man was tried, convicted, and hung. There were no other options, and we must not close our minds to the fact that this option does exist.
Before talking about Sadaam Hussain, let's admit that we have been in bed with many people like him and still are. Iraq was a manufactured war by The US and The UK. Sadaam was one cruel and fiendish man like many of our other friends, either dictators, Kings or Chiefdoms. We gave him the WMD's to be used against Iran. Both Rumsfeld and Cheney who worked in the American Administration did that and we have the pictures of them with Hussain as the proofs. We did not defend the Kurds as Papa Bush promised them when Saddam used WMD's supplied by us on them. Saudi Arabia is the same as Saddam if not worse. The one good thing according to me Sadaam did was giving $25k to each Palestinian family whose houses were bulldozed by the Israeli Defence Forces at will, which did not set well with us nor with our BFF Israel.
Sadaam should have been captured, tried and hanged if that were to be the law of the land by its own people, not by us. By invading Iraq, we handed it over to Iran and made Iran bolder to become nuclear because neither the Brits nor the Yankees understood the difference between the Shias and the Sunnis. Sadaam was our buffer zone, the second good thing he did for us against Iran, the advantage that we lost because of the invasion of Iraq. Now, Iraq is Iran's closest ally because both countries are Shias and Iraq along with Iran is helping Assad of Syria who is also a Shia. We lost more that 5000 of our best and billions of dollars for naught.
By ignoring Afghanistan in order to spread democracy in Iraq, we made Afghanistan the largest exporter of heroin which was sold to our kids to fund the terrorists to kill our soldiers. In other words, we funded wars on both sides
If we ponder all the above, we would perhaps take a different view.
Tejwant Singh
