A general estimate is that Saddam Hussein killed 300,000 people, started two major wars (the first against Iran, costing a million lives, and the second against Kuwait, with perhaps 100,000 dead); according to the New York Times' latest zig—zag, he came within a year of producing a nuclear bomb that could have been used to kill additional millions, and ensured the survival of his tyranny for the foreseeable future.  For sheer sadistic mayhem, like routine rape and murder, there has been no worse regime than Saddam. 

For the first time in human history, a mass—murdering tyrant on this scale has been caught, tried, and convicted in an open court of law. The people of Iraq and surrounding countries have been able to see him tried on television. Saddam has been sentenced to hang, according to Iraqi law, legitimized by the only elected government in the Arab Middle East.

By any decent human standard this is an extraordinary victory for civilization over barbarism. But rather than applaud a heroic achievement of Iraqi justice right in the middle of a war, Europe now noisily parades its opposition to capital punishment for Saddam.

Forget the usual pros and cons of capital punishment. Just ask yourself: Is Europe a morally serious place?

We know that its politicians constantly preach to the rest of the world. No doubt dinner conversations around the European continent echo the politicians. Tens of millions of Europeans obviously believe they are more moral than thou. But is there any truth to that?

Remember, for the first time in human history a major mass—murdering tyrant has been caught and brought to justice.

Hitler was never caught. Stalin and Mao died in their beds, and Jean—Paul Sartre, Europe's most famous philosopher of the 20th century, passionately supported them at the height of their reigns of terror. The entire French intellectual elite worships Sartre as well as Nazis like Paul de Man and Martin Heidegger. The whole gang of bloody—minded European professors either sided with the Nazis or the worst Leftist tyrants, just as today they are passionately attracted to Hamas and Hezbollah.

None of the tyrants who were glorified and rationalized by millions of Europeans were ever caught. Europe's ideological collusion was active and necessary for all those crimes to take place. Europe's scribbling classes created the propaganda and the diversions necessary for mass murder, not once, but over and over again over the last century.

But now Saddam Hussein has been caught, tried, and convicted, and will be hanged if his conviction is approved on appeal.

And Europe wants to spare Saddam's life.

Ten years ago Europeans looked on passively while genocide took place in the Balkans; finally they talked the United States into acting. The Europeans and their hero diplomat Kofi Annan, looked on and did nothing while genocide took place in Rwanda. Today a credible court case in France alleges that the French colluded and stirred up the genocidal parties for its own benefit. Today, Europe supports the Sudan being a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, and fails to do anything about yet another African genocide carried on by the Sudanese regime over a period of decades.

Yet Europe wants to spare Saddam's life.

The dirty little secret is that every mass—murdering ideology in the last two centuries had its origins and supporters in Europe. Pol Pot was Cambodian by birth but learned his revolutionary ideology in Paris. He was trained by the French Communist Party and the Russian KGB, went home, and massacred two or three million of his countrymen. Even Saddam's Baathist Party was modeled on the European fascist parties of the 1930s.

Yet Europe wants to spare Saddam's life.

The most infamous massacres of the 20th century, the Nazi genocide of some six million Jews, was inspired by a European nativist ideology.

Yet Europe wants to spare Saddam's life.

Belgium conducted mass murders in the Congo. France fought a vicious imperial war in Algeria. Russia, under the guise of the vaunted Soviet Union, the hope of mankind, created forced starvation in the Ukraine. And today, North Korea is still, responsible for systematically starving hundreds of thousands of its own people. Kim's regime is a stereotypical Stalinist regime  —— a European ideology passionately supported by millions and millions of people on that dark and cruel continent. (I do not refer to Africa.)

Today, Europeans politicians are again in the world news, very proudly calling to spare Saddam's life. It shows their sweet and moral nature.

Now we have new tyrants and terrorist at the gates. Three thousand innocent Americans were murdered five years ago, but Europe is urging us to forget all about it; and above all, not to take 9/11 as a warning of what is to come if we don't fight now. It's because they are so peaceful.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to "wipe Israel off the map." The Europeans have nominally taken the lead in negotiating with Ahmadinejad, to keep him from getting nukes. They have failed, because they are wishful weaklings, who rationalize any danger. The mullahs just laugh at them.

When sane nations take actions to stop Ahmadinejad, they will be viciously criticized by Europeans for doing so. We know that.

Europe is morally superior because it wants to spare Saddam.

If the whole world adopted Europe's "higher morality" we would all be dead. Because their moralizing isn't moral, it is merely flabby and self—indulgent.

We have protected Europe for a century with our blood and treasure. Under our protection they have constructed a Disneyland for adults, one that is utterly unable to defend itself. Instead, they have imported tens of millions of ideologues who want nothing more than to take over Europe.

Yet Europe is obnoxiously ready to preach morality to the decent nations of the world who are not as deluded as they are. True to their endless imperialistic arrogance, they are now exporting yet another world—conquering ideology, a fuzzier version of communism, aiming to actively hog—tie the United States through a hundred international treaties.

But this time they assure us that European—style world government will be paradise on earth. Trust us.

I'm curious — how is it that these people even dare to raise their heads when Iraq tries to punish Saddam?

James Lewis is a frequent contributor to American Thinker.