"Better make him fade into obscurity than to give him more media attention that he craves..."
You mean Moussaoui should "fade into obscurity" the same way that Muslim international celebrity-cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has "faded into obscurity?" I.e., the same Mumia Abu-Jamal whose cop-killing exploits are glorified at the following websites (note this is only a partial listing of the 2,120,000 Google hits for "Abu-Jamal"):
www.mumia.org/
www.mumia2000.org/
www.freemumia.org/
www.freemumia.com/
www.mumiabujamal.net/ (France)
www.refuseandresist.org/mumia/index.html
www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm (Netherlands)
www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm
www.mumia.org/index3.html
www.peaceandfreedom.org/Mumia.html
www.chicagofreemumia.org/
www.mumia.de/ (Germany)
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/10/1417258
www.geocities.com/mnsocialist/mumia.html
www.iacenter.org/polprisoners/imumia.htm
www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/na-jamal.shtml
www.ncrm.org.uk/campaigns/abu-jamal.html (U.K.)
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/1528239
www.imdb.com/name/nm0996311/
www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/AMR510202000 (Amnesty International)
www.syrculturalworkers.com/catalog/catalogIndex/CatMumia.html
www.cafepress.com/mumia
www.infoshop.org/prisons/public_html/index.php?topic=02/01/22/0441979
www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2004/10/CORYELL/11553 (France)
www.semiotexte.com/authors/wahad.html
www.csrp.org/mumia.htm
In what way is this "fading into obscurity???"
Believe me, the jury in the Moussaoui case did us no favors. They should have killed him.
My personal feelings were probably best expressed by Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal piece this morning:
PEGGY NOONAN
They Should Have Killed Him
The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn't vengeance.
Thursday, May 4, 2006 12:01 a.m.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)-- Moussaoui said as he was led from the courtroom: "America, you lost." He clapped his hands.
Excuse me, I'm sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury's decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve.
From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved--the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians, the victim representatives--showed an elaborate and jarring politesse. "We thank the jury." "I accept the verdict of course." "We can't question their hard work." "I know they did their best." "We thank the media for their hard work in covering this trial." "I don't want to second-guess the jury."
How removed from our base passions we've become. Or hope to seem.
It is as if we've become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we're just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it's not good we lose it.
No one wants to say, "They should have killed him." This is understandable, for no one wants to be called vengeful, angry or, far worse, unenlightened. But we should have put him to death, and for one big reason.
This is what Moussaoui did: He was in jail on a visa violation in August 2001. He knew of the upcoming attacks. In fact, he had taken flight lessons to take part in them. He told no one what was coming. He lied to the FBI so the attacks could go forward. He pled guilty last year to conspiring with al Qaeda; at his trial he bragged to the court that he had intended to be on the fifth aircraft, which was supposed to destroy the White House.
He knew the trigger was about to be pulled. He knew innocent people had been targeted, and were about to meet gruesome, unjust deaths.
He could have stopped it. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died.
This is what the jury announced yesterday. They did not doubt Moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy. They did not doubt his own testimony as to his guilt. They did not think he was incapable of telling right from wrong. They did not find him insane. They did believe, however, that he had had an unstable childhood, that his father was abusive and then abandoning, and that as a child, in his native France, he'd suffered the trauma of being exposed to racial slurs.
As I listened to the court officer read the jury's conclusions yesterday I thought: This isn't a decision, it's a non sequitur.
Of course he had a bad childhood; of course he was abused. You don't become a killer because you started out with love and sweetness. Of course he came from unhappiness. So, chances are, did the nice man sitting on the train the other day who rose to give you his seat. Life is hard and sometimes terrible, and that is a tragedy. It explains much, but it is not a free pass.
I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres--the academy and law and the media--have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don't wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they're lectured.
I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.
I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.
It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.
If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?
And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?
I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.
I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes.
Here's another insightful piece that was published today:
Sympathy for the Devil
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 4, 2006
Almost everyone thinks Zacarias Moussaoui is mad except Zacarias Moussaoui, and now he will have a lifetime to ponder that curious fact. Those who believe he is insane got yet more evidence on Wednesday when he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, and reacted as if he had been acquitted. He clapped his hands and shouted, “America, you lost. I won.” After all, what sane person would react in such a way to being sentenced to life behind bars? As if to explain his bizarre behavior, CNN placed a video link immediately following its account of Moussaoui’s exclamation: “Watch how Moussaoui grew up surrounded by pain -- 3:07).”
Maybe Moussaoui did grow up surrounded by pain, and as an adult, driven insane by this pain, turned to jihad. His own lawyers, abetted by his sisters and some of his old friends, attempted to stave off the death penalty by mounting what has become known as the “Officer Krupke” defense: fans of West Side Story will recall how gang member Action explained his delinquency to Krupke: “Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived.” If anyone was deprived, it was Moussaoui. According to his sister Jamilla, their father “poisoned our lives. He left us completely destitute. ... He was a man who never should have had children.” Moussaoui’s onetime friend Christophe Marguel testified that the future mujahid had a “very hard time” with racism in France. A clinical social worker, Jan Vogelsang, said that an upbringing like Moussaoui’s “would place someone at risk to wind up in serious circumstances later in life.”
Moussaoui himself would have none of this, dismissing it as “a lot of American B.S.” Nevertheless, the strategy apparently worked: he was indeed spared the death penalty. And to be sure, Moussaoui’s own erratic behavior has contributed to the impression that he is more than a little unhinged. Not the least of his strange outbursts was his reaction to video and audio of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the cries of the victims. “Burn in the U.S.A.!” Moussaoui shouted. “No pain, no gain!” For years he has sent long-winded, rambling “legal briefs” to Judge Leonie Brinkema, whom he dubbed “the death judge.” Brinkema, however, was herself not convinced that Moussaoui was crazy, writing in 2002: “It’s very, very, very significant that the day-to-day observations of the people in the Alexandria jail consistently negate any question about there being any serious mental illness or disease in Mr. Moussaoui.”
But if he isn’t insane, then what could possibly account for his behavior? Any normal person faced with either execution or life imprisonment might rejoice at being granted the latter, but why would Moussaoui characterize this as a victory for himself and a defeat for America?
The answer can be found in the ideology that motivated Moussaoui to get involved with Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. He told prosecutors that he felt “no regret, no remorse” for 9/11: “We want pain in your country. I wish there would be more pain.” Why? At his death penalty hearings, according to AP, Moussaoui “told jurors that Islam requires Muslims to be the world’s superpower as he flipped through a copy of the Koran searching for verses to support his assertions. One he cited requires non-Muslim nations to pay a tribute to Muslim countries.” It is likely that he cited Qur’an 9:29, which commands Muslims to make war against the “People of the Book” (i.e.. primarily Jews and Christians) until they pay the jizya, a poll tax not collected from Muslims, and “feel themselves subdued.” An echo of this verse comes through in Moussaoui’s statement that “we” -- the Islamic world -- “have to be the superpower. You have to be subdued. We have to be above you. Because Americans, you are the superpower, you want to eradicate us.”
Moussaoui made himself very clear. He identified himself as an adherent of the jihad ideology that fuels Islamic movements around the globe today, who are fighting in part because of the conviction enunciated decades ago by the Pakistani jihad thinker and politician Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi: he declared that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of Allah’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
From this perspective, why should Moussaoui feel any remorse for what he did? As he put it, “There is no regret for justice.” He sees 9/11 as the Muslims doing their utmost to dislodge the infidels from political power. He believes that when he inflicts pain upon those who are at war with Islam, he is doing what pleases Allah. He is working for justice in this world.
Why did he consider his evading the death penalty a victory? Some have suggested that executing Moussaoui would just make him a martyr in the Islamic world. In fact, however, this is unlikely. Strictly speaking, Paradise is promised only to those who “slay and are slain” for Allah (Qur’an 9:111), not to those who die an ignominious death at the hands of Infidel corrections officers. While there is little doubt that a dead Moussaoui would nevertheless be lionized in the Islamic world as another victim of America’s putative “war on Islam,” he is of more value to the global jihad alive than dead.
There are several reasons for this:
[1] The verdict will be seen in the Islamic world as another manifestation of American cowardice and failure of will, akin to Bill Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia after the Black Hawk incident -- which convinced Osama bin Laden that America could be beaten. A man who believes that the Almighty commands him to be “merciful” to his fellow Muslims but “ruthless” to the unbelievers (Qur’an 48:29) does not readily understand acts of mercy or forbearance as anything other than weakness. In this view a strong America would execute Moussaoui; a weak America allows him to live on.
[2] Moussaoui’s trial has aggravated the fissures between the United States and Europe. France has offered Moussaoui, a French citizen, consular protection. A living Moussaoui will be able to continue to try to worsen the tensions between the emerging Eurabia, made up as it is of terrified governments desperate to placate their growing and restive Muslim populations, and a U.S. still pursuing the war on terror.
[3] A living Moussaoui could become the Leonard Peltier of the jihad movement. Moussaoui executed will cause outrage for a moment; Moussaoui imprisoned will provoke outrage for a lifetime. For the next fifty years Moussaoui could become a symbol of American injustice: a rallying point for protestors, a new occasion for the international Left and the global jihad to make common cause. He himself has a tendency to make extreme, inflammatory statements -- so he will fit right in with the Left’s current crop of overheated rhetoricians.
[4] Moussaoui himself could become a heroic figure, most especially in whatever prison in which he is ultimately incarcerated. He will provide a new impetus for prison conversions to Islam, and a rallying point for jihad recruitment in his prison. This may be the most important reason of all why Moussaoui declared victory on Wednesday: he can see himself training up the next generation of mujahedin who will see his great battle for Allah through to final victory over the American Great Satan.
Of course, none of these reasons are likely to have been considered by anyone connected with Moussaoui’s sentencing. They were, in contrast, preoccupied with questions of Moussaoui’s sanity. It is unfortunate that they apparently did not understand or attach much weight to Moussaoui’s statement that suicide bombings were “not crazy but based on Islam.” If they had, they might have realized that by sentencing him to life in prison, they were only helping his cause.
Bottom Line: The jury in the Moussaoui case did us no favors. They should have killed him.
Thankfully we won't give this guy what he wants, martyrdom.
Isn't he more valuable to us alive, anyway?
I can't believe I'm agreeing with Steve and maf53. I know it's wishful thinking, but one can only hope he'll spend the rest of his miserable life making small rocks out of big rocks. Maybe he can room with Ted Kaczynski, and they can compare bomb notes.
He's worthless to us alive, but the jury decided that he was a kook. So he lives, on our dime, for the rest of his life, behind bars.
They ought to put him in the general population...
What's the over/under for this guy getting greased in Prison?
Of course only after he drops the soap a few times too. I give it 2 years before he's a dead man
It's my understanding that he'll be put into a military prison in Colorado. Solitary confinement. No TV. No papers. One hour per day exercise. Fed in his cell.
Although I'm seething that we're spending a single dime on this pitiful excuse for a human being, I agree that we're ultimately not handing him (or his coherts) any propoganda fodder as a martyr...
No dropping of soap. No murder by the inmates. Nothing but a monotonous drip of days, one after the other, until, eventually, he gets to meet those 72 virgin demons... in the fires of hell.
For once I have to agree with being against the death penalty in this guys case! It truly is more torture to keep him alive and in an American(torture prison). I'm sure Keef & dbog are right tho, he won't last long! I just hope they make his death much longer than those jumping from the burning trade centers!
oops, sorry guys! Warrior nation made the call & I agree with ya!
Now if we can get rid of abortion and war we'll have a more moral world. Peace
I have to say that I am pleased with this sentence - it is the worst thing we can do to him; let him live, to think endlessly over what he did.
I agree Mark, and we don't make him any kind of martyr. But I doubt thinking about what he did will bother him much. He seems like too much of a sociopath.
Hey I live a few hours away from Florence, Colorado. Maybe I'll drive by sometimes and see if I can spot him through the bars. LOL
Remember also that he will spend all those years in solitary confinemt, no windows, no human contact, nothing for about 50 years. Can't think of a more just punishment.
"Remember also that he will spend all those years in solitary confinemt, no windows, no human contact, nothing for about 50 years. Can't think of a more just punishment."
Which basically means he'll probably kill himself within a few years. He probably would have lived longer if he was sentenced to death.
I just want him gone because we all know some ACLU lawyer is going to come on every few months with a new statement from him giving the same ol ACLU rhetoric... oops i mean terrorist rhetoric over and over
Its fine if he kills himself, then he is a crappy muslim. Its okay if someone in prison kills him too, it will be fairly low profile and wouldn't be a nationally sanctioned murder like if he had been sentenced. Really its win win any way it goes. Hopefully though he will just have to sit in a little room for the next 60 years. I know I get bored in the doctors office in about 5 minutes, wouldn't like to be there for decades.
"Hopefully though he will just have to sit in a little room for the next 60 years."
Or Steve he could be forced to listen to Rush Limbaugh 24-7.
Quit the "livin' on our dime" crap already.
It's not your dime, it's your grandkids dime.
we'll add the cost to the cost of this war (which we're putting on the national credit card).
Or does Blogs for Bush think it's wrong to saddle our grandkids with debt?
Unless the answer is yes, I'm done listening to you whine about the costs of anything.
No way Ash, we wouldn't waste pearls of great price such as the Maha Rushy's on a pathetic murderer! I think he would feel more torture having to listen to an athiest like franken spouting all day anyways!
The sick and twisted mind of the lib: keep murderers alive, kill the unborn.
What else can we expect from the slimeballs?
Personally speaking I'd love to have one day in the cell before he arrives...
I'd get pictures of everyone who died on 9/11 and any who died after in the WOT... paste them to the wall... Then put on a few layers of clear coat on...
For the rest of his life....6000+ eyes would watch him...
Unfortunately (!) he didn't kill anyone and as a rule we reward incompetence in this field of endeavor. If you don't kill them automatically it encourages the rest to surrender when surrounded rather than say, "F- it!!" and start killing hostages along with themselves.
SOME LIBERAL TWISTED JURER SAVED THE LIFE OF THIS BAS... WHO COMES UP WITH THESE STUPID LEGAL REQUIREMENTS...ONLY A UNANIMOUS VOTE,GETS THE DEATH PENALTY. WHERE IS THE JUSTICE?
THOSE THAT HARBOUR 9/11 TERRORIST ARE AS GUILTY AS THOSE WHO CARRIED OUT THEIR TWISTED MIND MISSIONS.
THE 9/11 VICTIMS...FAMILIES SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO VETO THIS VERDICT...A SAD OUTCOME FOR ALL.
Orion,
But he did kill. His inaction to save the lives of the Americans killed on 9-11 makes him a killer; just as guilty as those that planned it, or those that committed it.
JEA,
This is our system, it isn't always pretty, and it doesn't make everyone happy, but this is our system of justice. I would have decided differently than the jury, but they didn’t ask my opinion.
For better or worse we decided that a jury hearing all the evidence is to decide this man's fate. As a society we ruled out mob justice before we became a country.
Better make him fade into obscurity than to give him more media attention that he craves...
"Better make him fade into obscurity than to give him more media attention that he craves..."
You mean Moussaoui should "fade into obscurity" the same way that Muslim international celebrity-cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal has "faded into obscurity?" I.e., the same Mumia Abu-Jamal whose cop-killing exploits are glorified at the following websites (note this is only a partial listing of the 2,120,000 Google hits for "Abu-Jamal"):
www.mumia.org/
www.mumia2000.org/
www.freemumia.org/
www.freemumia.com/
www.mumiabujamal.net/ (France)
www.refuseandresist.org/mumia/index.html
www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm (Netherlands)
www.prisonradio.org/mumia.htm
www.mumia.org/index3.html
www.peaceandfreedom.org/Mumia.html
www.chicagofreemumia.org/
www.mumia.de/ (Germany)
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/10/1417258
www.geocities.com/mnsocialist/mumia.html
www.iacenter.org/polprisoners/imumia.htm
www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/na-jamal.shtml
www.ncrm.org.uk/campaigns/abu-jamal.html (U.K.)
www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/07/1528239
www.imdb.com/name/nm0996311/
www.web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/index/AMR510202000 (Amnesty International)
www.syrculturalworkers.com/catalog/catalogIndex/CatMumia.html
www.cafepress.com/mumia
www.infoshop.org/prisons/public_html/index.php?topic=02/01/22/0441979
www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2004/10/CORYELL/11553 (France)
www.semiotexte.com/authors/wahad.html
www.csrp.org/mumia.htm
In what way is this "fading into obscurity???"
Believe me, the jury in the Moussaoui case did us no favors. They should have killed him.
My personal feelings were probably best expressed by Peggy Noonan in her Wall Street Journal piece this morning:
PEGGY NOONAN
They Should Have Killed Him
The death penalty has a meaning, and it isn't vengeance.
Thursday, May 4, 2006 12:01 a.m.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP)-- Moussaoui said as he was led from the courtroom: "America, you lost." He clapped his hands.
Excuse me, I'm sorry, and I beg your pardon, but the jury's decision on Moussaoui gives me a very bad feeling. What we witnessed here was not the higher compassion but a dizzy failure of nerve.
From the moment the decision was announced yesterday, everyone, all the parties involved--the cable jockeys, the legal analysts, the politicians, the victim representatives--showed an elaborate and jarring politesse. "We thank the jury." "I accept the verdict of course." "We can't question their hard work." "I know they did their best." "We thank the media for their hard work in covering this trial." "I don't want to second-guess the jury."
How removed from our base passions we've become. Or hope to seem.
It is as if we've become sophisticated beyond our intelligence, savvy beyond wisdom. Some might say we are showing a great and careful generosity, as befits a great nation. But maybe we're just, or also, rolling in our high-mindedness like a puppy in the grass. Maybe we are losing some crude old grit. Maybe it's not good we lose it.
No one wants to say, "They should have killed him." This is understandable, for no one wants to be called vengeful, angry or, far worse, unenlightened. But we should have put him to death, and for one big reason.
This is what Moussaoui did: He was in jail on a visa violation in August 2001. He knew of the upcoming attacks. In fact, he had taken flight lessons to take part in them. He told no one what was coming. He lied to the FBI so the attacks could go forward. He pled guilty last year to conspiring with al Qaeda; at his trial he bragged to the court that he had intended to be on the fifth aircraft, which was supposed to destroy the White House.
He knew the trigger was about to be pulled. He knew innocent people had been targeted, and were about to meet gruesome, unjust deaths.
He could have stopped it. He did nothing. And so 2,700 people died.
This is what the jury announced yesterday. They did not doubt Moussaoui was guilty of conspiracy. They did not doubt his own testimony as to his guilt. They did not think he was incapable of telling right from wrong. They did not find him insane. They did believe, however, that he had had an unstable childhood, that his father was abusive and then abandoning, and that as a child, in his native France, he'd suffered the trauma of being exposed to racial slurs.
As I listened to the court officer read the jury's conclusions yesterday I thought: This isn't a decision, it's a non sequitur.
Of course he had a bad childhood; of course he was abused. You don't become a killer because you started out with love and sweetness. Of course he came from unhappiness. So, chances are, did the nice man sitting on the train the other day who rose to give you his seat. Life is hard and sometimes terrible, and that is a tragedy. It explains much, but it is not a free pass.
I have the sense that many good people in our country, normal modest folk who used to be forced to endure being patronized and instructed by the elites of all spheres--the academy and law and the media--have sort of given up and cut to the chase. They don't wait to be instructed in the higher virtues by the professional class now. They immediately incorporate and reflect the correct wisdom before they're lectured.
I'm not sure this is progress. It feels not like the higher compassion but the lower evasion. It feels dainty in a way that speaks not of gentleness but fear.
I happen, as most adults do, to feel a general ambivalence toward the death penalty. But I know why it exists. It is the expression of a certitude, of a shared national conviction, about the value of a human life. It says the deliberate and planned taking of a human life is so serious, such a wound to justice, such a tearing at the human fabric, that there is only one price that is justly paid for it, and that is the forfeiting of the life of the perpetrator. It is society's way of saying that murder is serious, dreadfully serious, the most serious of all human transgressions.
It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.
If Moussaoui didn't deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?
And if he didn't receive it, do we still have it?
I don't want to end with an air of hopelessness, so here's some hope, offered to the bureau of prisons. I hope he doesn't get cable TV in his cell. I hope he doesn't get to use his hour a day in general population getting buff and converting prisoners to jihad. I hope he isn't allowed visitors with whom he can do impolite things like plot against our country. I hope he isn't allowed anniversary interviews. I hope his jolly colleagues don't take captives whom they threaten to kill unless Moussaoui is released.
I hope he doesn't do any more damage. I hope this is the last we hear of him. But I'm not hopeful about my hopes.
Here's another insightful piece that was published today:
Sympathy for the Devil
By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 4, 2006
Almost everyone thinks Zacarias Moussaoui is mad except Zacarias Moussaoui, and now he will have a lifetime to ponder that curious fact. Those who believe he is insane got yet more evidence on Wednesday when he was sentenced to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, and reacted as if he had been acquitted. He clapped his hands and shouted, “America, you lost. I won.” After all, what sane person would react in such a way to being sentenced to life behind bars? As if to explain his bizarre behavior, CNN placed a video link immediately following its account of Moussaoui’s exclamation: “Watch how Moussaoui grew up surrounded by pain -- 3:07).”
Maybe Moussaoui did grow up surrounded by pain, and as an adult, driven insane by this pain, turned to jihad. His own lawyers, abetted by his sisters and some of his old friends, attempted to stave off the death penalty by mounting what has become known as the “Officer Krupke” defense: fans of West Side Story will recall how gang member Action explained his delinquency to Krupke: “Hey, I’m depraved on account I’m deprived.” If anyone was deprived, it was Moussaoui. According to his sister Jamilla, their father “poisoned our lives. He left us completely destitute. ... He was a man who never should have had children.” Moussaoui’s onetime friend Christophe Marguel testified that the future mujahid had a “very hard time” with racism in France. A clinical social worker, Jan Vogelsang, said that an upbringing like Moussaoui’s “would place someone at risk to wind up in serious circumstances later in life.”
Moussaoui himself would have none of this, dismissing it as “a lot of American B.S.” Nevertheless, the strategy apparently worked: he was indeed spared the death penalty. And to be sure, Moussaoui’s own erratic behavior has contributed to the impression that he is more than a little unhinged. Not the least of his strange outbursts was his reaction to video and audio of the destruction of the World Trade Center and the cries of the victims. “Burn in the U.S.A.!” Moussaoui shouted. “No pain, no gain!” For years he has sent long-winded, rambling “legal briefs” to Judge Leonie Brinkema, whom he dubbed “the death judge.” Brinkema, however, was herself not convinced that Moussaoui was crazy, writing in 2002: “It’s very, very, very significant that the day-to-day observations of the people in the Alexandria jail consistently negate any question about there being any serious mental illness or disease in Mr. Moussaoui.”
But if he isn’t insane, then what could possibly account for his behavior? Any normal person faced with either execution or life imprisonment might rejoice at being granted the latter, but why would Moussaoui characterize this as a victory for himself and a defeat for America?
The answer can be found in the ideology that motivated Moussaoui to get involved with Al-Qaeda and the 9/11 plot. He told prosecutors that he felt “no regret, no remorse” for 9/11: “We want pain in your country. I wish there would be more pain.” Why? At his death penalty hearings, according to AP, Moussaoui “told jurors that Islam requires Muslims to be the world’s superpower as he flipped through a copy of the Koran searching for verses to support his assertions. One he cited requires non-Muslim nations to pay a tribute to Muslim countries.” It is likely that he cited Qur’an 9:29, which commands Muslims to make war against the “People of the Book” (i.e.. primarily Jews and Christians) until they pay the jizya, a poll tax not collected from Muslims, and “feel themselves subdued.” An echo of this verse comes through in Moussaoui’s statement that “we” -- the Islamic world -- “have to be the superpower. You have to be subdued. We have to be above you. Because Americans, you are the superpower, you want to eradicate us.”
Moussaoui made himself very clear. He identified himself as an adherent of the jihad ideology that fuels Islamic movements around the globe today, who are fighting in part because of the conviction enunciated decades ago by the Pakistani jihad thinker and politician Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi: he declared that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of Allah’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
From this perspective, why should Moussaoui feel any remorse for what he did? As he put it, “There is no regret for justice.” He sees 9/11 as the Muslims doing their utmost to dislodge the infidels from political power. He believes that when he inflicts pain upon those who are at war with Islam, he is doing what pleases Allah. He is working for justice in this world.
Why did he consider his evading the death penalty a victory? Some have suggested that executing Moussaoui would just make him a martyr in the Islamic world. In fact, however, this is unlikely. Strictly speaking, Paradise is promised only to those who “slay and are slain” for Allah (Qur’an 9:111), not to those who die an ignominious death at the hands of Infidel corrections officers. While there is little doubt that a dead Moussaoui would nevertheless be lionized in the Islamic world as another victim of America’s putative “war on Islam,” he is of more value to the global jihad alive than dead.
There are several reasons for this:
[1] The verdict will be seen in the Islamic world as another manifestation of American cowardice and failure of will, akin to Bill Clinton’s withdrawal from Somalia after the Black Hawk incident -- which convinced Osama bin Laden that America could be beaten. A man who believes that the Almighty commands him to be “merciful” to his fellow Muslims but “ruthless” to the unbelievers (Qur’an 48:29) does not readily understand acts of mercy or forbearance as anything other than weakness. In this view a strong America would execute Moussaoui; a weak America allows him to live on.
[2] Moussaoui’s trial has aggravated the fissures between the United States and Europe. France has offered Moussaoui, a French citizen, consular protection. A living Moussaoui will be able to continue to try to worsen the tensions between the emerging Eurabia, made up as it is of terrified governments desperate to placate their growing and restive Muslim populations, and a U.S. still pursuing the war on terror.
[3] A living Moussaoui could become the Leonard Peltier of the jihad movement. Moussaoui executed will cause outrage for a moment; Moussaoui imprisoned will provoke outrage for a lifetime. For the next fifty years Moussaoui could become a symbol of American injustice: a rallying point for protestors, a new occasion for the international Left and the global jihad to make common cause. He himself has a tendency to make extreme, inflammatory statements -- so he will fit right in with the Left’s current crop of overheated rhetoricians.
[4] Moussaoui himself could become a heroic figure, most especially in whatever prison in which he is ultimately incarcerated. He will provide a new impetus for prison conversions to Islam, and a rallying point for jihad recruitment in his prison. This may be the most important reason of all why Moussaoui declared victory on Wednesday: he can see himself training up the next generation of mujahedin who will see his great battle for Allah through to final victory over the American Great Satan.
Of course, none of these reasons are likely to have been considered by anyone connected with Moussaoui’s sentencing. They were, in contrast, preoccupied with questions of Moussaoui’s sanity. It is unfortunate that they apparently did not understand or attach much weight to Moussaoui’s statement that suicide bombings were “not crazy but based on Islam.” If they had, they might have realized that by sentencing him to life in prison, they were only helping his cause.
Bottom Line: The jury in the Moussaoui case did us no favors. They should have killed him.
Much worse than a martyr, Moussaoui now becomes a living inspiration, a symbol of hope, to both Al Qaeda and their sympathizers who wish nothing other than to see Moussaoui's prediction that eventually President Bush will be forced to pardon him. Alive and imprisoned, Moussaoui maintains now a symbiotic relationship with Al Qaeda and their recruiting efforts around the globe.
We can now expect nothing other than Al Qaeda's new recruits inspired by America's lack of resolve and Moussaoui's predictions to go on a hostage taking spree of Americans in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe in the hopes of forcing Moussaoui's release in an exchange of prisoners.
How many videos will we have to watch on Al Jazeera of American hostages now begging for their lives unless Moussaoui is released?
And how many of those hostages will suffer the ultimate penalty that Moussaoui should have paid?