Who we should hang after we hang Saddam Hussein?

God.

Saddam Hussein found guilty of executing fewer than 200 men and boys after an assassination attempt was made on the dictator’s life near the village where these unfortunate men and boys lived. They weren’t guilty of any wrongdoing—but that didn’t stop Hussein from having these men and boys rounded up, tortured, and executed. Saddam was sending a message to all of Iraq:

“Don’t want fuck with me, people, because that’s going to make me mad and when I’m mad I fucking kill people—yes, even people that had nothing to do with whatever it was that made me mad in the first place. So not only should you avoid pissing me off, you need to keep an eye on your friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens to make sure they don’t piss me off. Because if they do, then a bunch of folks are gonna die—and that might include you and your whole family.”�

Saddam’s crime was a horrific—it’s the same crime that got hundreds of Nazis strung up after WWII. When a despot or an occupying power or a rebel army tortures and kills innocent people to send a message to, say, the population of occupied France or Kosovo or Iraq, that’s what known as reprisal killings, and that’s a war crime. And it mystifies me that American fundamentalists constantly accusing Jesus Christ—the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, the Savior of All Mankind, etc.—of engaging in reprisal killings and summary executions on a scale that would make a genocidal maniac like Hussein blush.

Remember last December’s Asian Tsunami? How do we account for such suffering? Children ripped from the arms of weeping parents, wives drowned before the eyes of their helpless husbands, entire villages washed away, supermodels stranded in trees? The American Taliban rushed on to cable news programs to explain it all for us: God was angry about the legalization of gay marriage in Massachusetts. So God tortured and executed a quarter of a million people on the other side of the planet.

And remember Katrina? Remember this image:

The American Taliban told us that God sent a Giant Killer Fetus in the form of a hurricane to send a message to the United States about our tolerance of abortion and to New Orleans about its tolerance of “Southern Decadence,”� a gay party that takes place in the French Quarter every year. But the Giant Killer Fetus didn’t inundate abortion clinics or drown Planned Parenthood counselors or pro-choice Democrats. Nope, the Giant Killer Fetus sent by God to punish us for choice and circuit parties drowned helpless little old ladies in nursing homes and small black children in attics. America’s abortion clinics survived unscathed—as did the entire French Quarter, home to Southern Decadence and all of New Orlean’s gay bars.

Likewise the Northridge Earthquake in 1994. Pat Robertson said it was an expression of God’s anger at the American porn industry, which is located near that quakes epicenter. Dozens of people died—not one was a porn star, director, or producer. And 9/11? God was angry at the feminists, abortionists, and gays—so he rounded up, tortured, and killed 3,000 people. Some were probably feminists and there were definitely gay people on the planes and maybe there was an abortion service provider on one of those planes or in the Pentagon (?) or an office in the World Trade Center. But the overwhelming majority—thousands of people—were “innocent” of those crimes.

Yet the very same people who tell us that God expresses his displeasure with the behavior of some by sending hurricanes and tsunamis to execute innocent people also tell us that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful. It seems to me that an ASAKSP God could easily drown abortion doctors and male go-go dancers if that’s what he wanted to do. But he doesn’t do that. He executes innocent people—just like Saddam did. God’s fans here on earth tell us again and again that He tortures and murders innocent people to send a message to the entire population about abortion or gays or prayer in the schools. Which makes God a war criminal. The Prince of Peace is the moral equal of a Saddam Hussein or an Adolph Hitler or a Slobodan Milosevic or a Pol Pot.

So after we hang Saddam I propose we convene an international tribunal, put God on trial, take testimony from his most ardent supporters—first up, Pat Robertson—and then hang God’s murderous, tyrannical ass before he kills again.