Should The Soldiers Found Guilty Be Executed?

Hezbollah jumps at an opportunity to make Lebanon more like Iran.

Should they be scapegoated?

For the sake of argument — and I’m in no position to speculate on the outcome of the investigation — let’s assume that the probe into Sunday’s events reveals that in the heat of the confrontation, a group of Lebanese soldiers and officers freaked out at the mob’s attempts to usurp their weapons by force and intimidate them by hurling stones and shouting insults at them. Let’s say that those soldiers and officers responded disproportionately and shot at the mobs killing a few of them. 

Of course, if that is the case, any reasonable person would agree that the guilty men in uniform should be severely punished, disgraced and maybe even jailed for many years. On a larger scale, an overhaul of the army should equip it with rubber bullets and other non-fatal riot control equipment. But should the soldiers be executed as one Hezbollah official was demanding?

Shouldn’t we take into consideration self defense and the extraordinary war-like situation where a soldier’s ability for measured response is severely compromised? Do we really want to become an execution nation like Iran, where teenage girls are publicly executed for “crimes against chastity” ? 

Today, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s representative to the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani, said that “Hezbollah’s victory in the July War is the fruit of the Iranian Revolution”. Let’s just hope no other fruit of that sort trickles down to our justice system.