Prodi rejects death; Death demurs

By James Lewis

In a supreme gesture of Eurosilliness, Romano Prodi, the Prime Minister of Italy, has proposed that the European Union should take a united stand against the death penalty --- specifically, the hanging by the neck until dead of one Saddam Hussein, responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths during his reign of terror. But while Prodi rejects death, Death itself presumably demurs. It does not obey the dictates of Europe's lush bureaucracy.

The corrupt and fraudulent EU has not had its annual budget certified even once in twelve years, because it is so filled with corruption and mismanagement. Romano Prodi is a past head of the EU during Saddam's years of power. But moral vanity is the greatest single achievement of Eurosocialism, and Prodi is one of its best practitioners. In the European Union, appearances beat reality any time. So we can expect the EU to take up Prodi's proposal with all due seriousness.

I know of no evidence that Prodi himself was on the take from Saddam's Oil-for-Food outrage, which suborned the Secretary General's office at the UN along with whole chunks of the French political elite. Prodi's Italy has a long tradition of political bribery, but it might not have been worth Saddam's nickel, since Italy doesn't have a seat on the Security Council. Let's eliminate money as an incentive for Prodi's adventure in holier-than-thou preaching, and chalk it up to sheer vanity. But Saddam's many victims might politely disagree.

A European continent that can't understand its own history is not ready for prime time.