Cautiously optimistic?

AllahPundit and others are cautiously optimistic about the new SecGen of the UN, Ban Ki-moon. His reply to a question at a press conference indicates that he believes Saddam to have been a vicious thug and mass murderer and, possibly, deserving of the death sentence.

He also adds that whatever his private views are, capital punishment is for each member state to decide on. Of course, what he really means is that it is for the political elite of each member state to decide on, with added counter-inducements thrown in by such organizations as the European Union.

We shall watch the developments with interest but we maintain our basic position: individuals like Kofi Annan may be the pits in transnational politics but, in the end, it is the system that is the real problem.

To prove this, Al-Jazeera reports that Ban Ki-moon is finding himself in hot water by not coming out categorically against capital punishment. Italy, according to this report is starting an international drive for a complete ban (well, a complete ban by the UN and we all know what that is worth) on all executions.

On Sunday, Ashraf Qazi Jehangir, the UN special representative in Iraq, had released a statement saying that the world body "remains opposed to capital punishment, even in the case of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide".

In other words, the UN together with the EU, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Italian government considers the lives of bloodthirsty mass murderers to be more valuable than those of their victims.