Moussaoui Verdict: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong
For his involvement in the heinous acts of September 11, 2001, Zacharias Moussaoui has been blessed with life at a taxpayer cost of over $100,000 per year. This is incredibly distressing to me. It means that twelve Americans sat together for days, deliberated a verdict, answered an onerous verdict form, and couldn't arrive at the correct one.
"The correct one" you may ask? Indeed, the correct one. And here is a wonderful argument for its justification from Patrick Buchanan's Right from the Beginning:
A modern society that outlaws the death penalty does not send a message of reverence for life, but a message of moral confusion. When we outlaw the death penalty, we tell the murderer, the rapist, the cutthroat that, no matter what he may do to innocent people in our custody and care, women, children, old people, his most treasured possession, his life, is secure. We guarantee it — in advance. Just as a nation that declares that nothing will make it go to war finds itself at the mercy of warlike regimes, so a society that will not put the worst of its criminals to death will find itself at the mercy of criminals who have no qualms about putting innocent people to death.How prescient Buchanan was then. And how awful the verdict is today.
Is it any wonder the terrorists do not fear us?
UPDATE: The always-eloquent Peggy Noonan weighs in on this subject.
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3 comments:
Oddly, I find the terrorists are often right in some of their comments--certainly not all. But as outsiders, they can take the measure of the US by looking at our ambivalence (cowardice) regarding the death penalty, our lack of commitment to wars, and other things.
Buchanan is right, of course.
I would mention though, that the death penalty is always more expensive than life in prison due to the circus of never-ending appeals at all levels of government. On the other hand, this may be an exceptional case if you say it's over $100,000 per year.
What nation but ours would find a way to make prison, including 23 hours solitary a day as I hear it, so expensive?
Well, you're absolutely right, of course, and we are becoming a nation of mealy-mouthed lily-livered cowards. There should have been a way to torture him to death, in my opinion. However, I take solace in the knowledge that he will be alone and more or less miserable and bored and frustrated
for the rest of his life.
And he'll get his "reward" later.
Indeed, botso, 23-hour-per-day confinement isn't Pleasantville. However, this jury has opened up our nation to decades of ransom demands for Moussaoui's release.
Personally, I don't care if he becomes a "martyr". That's their culture. In my culture, bad guys are dealt with properly. At least, they used to be.
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