In today's featured article at FrontPage, I explore the implications of yesterday's Moussaoui sentencing (news links in the original):
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.
I think there is a hostage exchange deal in the making -- not good!
you nailed it robert,a new charlie manson,t.v books,fans.and all islam all the time.
Witness; I hope that you're wrong.
The list of mitigating circumstances reads like a parody of everything that is most sentimental and silly in modern psychiatry (Karl Kraus: "Psychiatry is the disease for which it is supposed to be the cure."). What the prosecution should have done, but apparently felt it could not do, or possibly simply did not ever even think of doing, was to pre-empt both both the "insanity" and the "on account of he's deprived" excuses, and set out clearly why Moussaoui did what he did with clear and uninhibited discussion of that book he was clutching -- the Qur'an -- and with the Qur'an, the Hadith. And with the Hadith, the figure of Muhammad, uswa hasana al-insan al-kamil.
Lay it all out. Explain that yes, Moussaoui like a few billion other people may have had a "deprived" childhood. Yes, he was quick to sense any slight, and yes, he was quick to resent his treatment at the hands of Infidels, because, as a Muslim (one who grew to be more and more faithful and observant) he knew that Muslims should be on top -- not equal, but on top. Infidels lording it over him, or other Muslims, in France, were contra naturam, against the natural and just and right order of things, islamically speaking. The prosecutors should have explained that Moussaoui viewed the world through the prism of Islam, and the texts he read, the society he inhabited (both real, and virtual), taught him to blame, always and everywhere, Infidels.
Eventually this is going to have to be done. Eventually, if the United States and other Infidel countries are going to continue to use the criminal justice system as it is, and continued to rely on untrained and inexpert juries, the products of their age, with its sentimentality about mitigating circumstances because, you see, the blame for your behavior can always, always, be found in some part of your background, so that blame can be passed onto one's upbringing, say.
But this misses the point. There are always people who have had unhappy childhoods, unhappy adolescences, unhappy adult-hoods. As noted many times before, we who are Infidels may lose status, a job, a spouse, a girlfriend or boyfriend, suffer setbacks or perceived slights (did not Moussaoui think he was entitled to more than he received? yet his inshallah-fatalism prevented him from simply working hard and doing what he could to overcome, as his brother did, that same background. Why? The answer is that he took Islam far more seriously, was far more of a deep believer, than his brother).
Infidels have a thousand things to blame. They can blame their parents (just as many on that Infidel jury wanted to blame, for Moussaoui, his treatment by his parents), their aggressive or unpleasant siblings, their ungrateful children, the System, Racism, Amerika, Kapitalism, Fate, the stars, their cholesterol level, their serotonin level, anything and everythning at all -- even, just perhaps, themselves. But Muslim Believers have one thing to blame, always at the ready. And to the extent that one takes that belief-system seriously, it is likely that one will, viewing the universe through the grid, the prism, of Islam, blame the Infidel. And that is exactly what Moussaoui did.
Unless this is going to be understood by the usual "experts" including those complacent psychiatrists who appear not to have thought it necesasry for them to study the doctrines of Islam and what might, what has, naturally follow from them (starting with the perceived behavior of Muslims conducting Jihad over 1350 years, wherever they were able to conduct it because of local conditions or circumstances), then there will be more miscarriages, with justice stillborn, the result of those thanatotropic bromides and thalidomides -- sentimentality and ignorance.
Only the civilized world sees mouse as insane. Only the P.C. will not let him take responsibility for his actions.
He's not insane....he's muslim. He follows the koran. To us, he's nuttier than a fruitcake.
So what if he grew up destitute. There were a lot of people before and after the Great Depression that absolutely had nothing. Being poor is not an excuse for wanting to kill indiscriminately.
And yes, allah condones misery, violence,lying, envy and mouse was just following his orders.
from another book,one ignored.there is no justice in your courts.
Home sweet home for Moussaoui and Richard Reid.
http://www.answers.com/topic/adx-florence
For those of you who think that Moussaoui's life sentence is somehow better punishment than the death , that he is going to "rot in prison", or that we robbed him of martyrdom. Consider this. Omar Abdel-Rahman,the Egyptian "Blind Cleric", who was sentenced to life in 1995 for the 1993 WTC Bombing. has staged hunger strikes and garnered support at websites likeThis one.His lawyer, Lynne Stewart was convicted for helping Abdel-Rahmen communicate with his followers in Egypt.
Peggy Noonan has a good commentary.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008330&mod=RSS_Opinion_Journal&ojrss=frontpage
The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Liberalism has caused this verdict. The liberals sympathize and try to explain the terrorists. Liberals were on that jury. They would sympathize with and try to explain Hitler if he was around today.
My tax money is going to keep this cockroach alive. That is an injustice, but not nearly the injustice knowing that the friends and family of almost 3,000 dead must live with that fact and the fact that this demon still lives on Earth. I hope he chokes to death on his vomit.
I don't see the problem with Moussaoui getting life in prison in a supermax.
If he were placed into a situation like that of John Walker Lindh, I'd be incensed. But at the place he's presumed to be going-- ADX Florence, linked above-- I don't expect to be hearing much from him, as is the case with some other well-known inmates at that Colorado prison, including:
- Omar Abdel Rahman
- Richard Reid
- Ramsey Yousef
- Ahmed Ajaj
- Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber
- Terry Nichols
The first four are of particular interest: One doesn't hear anything from them, or about them, for that matter, nowadays.
And there they rot.
If Moussaoui is allowed to do what #3/4 above suggest, it is the penal system that is nuts.
I dont think any of that will happen. They cant put him in the general population. He will be killed in a few days. The whole question of his sanity is insane. Who cares if he is mentally ill or not. Oh, he had a hard life...so what? Lots of people have hard lives but dont plot terrorist acts. He may be erratic and make boisterous remarks...that does not make him psychotic. Does he hear voices? Does he respond to them? Is he talking to himself, or laughing inappropriatly? Did they put him on psychotropic medications, like Haldol or Thorazine? He may be a psychopath, but he is not psychotic. As a psychopath he would have no remorse for his actions and would do them again if he got the chance. That is a form of crazyness, but it is not the kind the defense was looking for. Psychopaths are usually smart and cunning...most politicians and used car dealers are psychopaths.
"This car was previously owned by a little old lady who only drove to church and back"...sure...
Just lock him away in some dark hole and let him compost.
D'oh. Trying that link the simple way:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence
Kevin-- I was typing my post while yours appeared. To follow up:
Try as he might, Rahman isn't making headlines, hasn't been mentioned on a tape recently (ever?) by bin Laden/Zarqawi/Zawahiri. And Moussaoui isn't held in nearly the same esteem in the ummah, to say the least.
I don't know how many of you saw the interview with the mother of one of the men killed on flight 93 on FNC this morning, but I'm sorry...I just wanted to puke. Sing song voice..."the muslim world will see how we are forgiving" etc. etc. I am sooo tired of a feminized society that just doesn't get it!
Juries Are Great!
Hugh, I am disappointed at your comments regarding "untrained and inexpert" juries.
The jury system is a legacy of our anglo-saxon system of justice, and is part of our culture.
If you have a civil or criminal matter, wouldn't you prefer rolling the dice with a jury of your peers rather than a political appointee judge of any ilk?
What is necessary is to let people know that Islam is not a religion, but an enemy political system and any adherents of Islam should be considered enemies of the U.S. and removed from our country. We shouldn't change our system one iota because of the Islamofascists.
A 7 by 7 cell with a four inch window, 23 hours a day in solitary confinement sounds like a great punishment for the scumbag - I think the jury made a great choice.
It begins, the attorney for mom mouse has stated that he will try to get him transfered to France.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194201,00.html
SuperMax - solitary confinement - for life. No chance for prison da'wa. I heard he was going to Colorado, not Florida.
OT
Ronin:
WHAT ABOUT THE CRUSADER STATUE? Sorry to shout (it was really just for empmasis) but I am DYING for one!
Uh . . . "emphasis"
Carolyn2, let's remember the French tomorrow, as Cinco de Mayo celebrates Mexico's victory over the French!
I think that Moussaoui should be placed in the general prison population. With luck, he will be beaten up every day by the other inmates for the rest of his pathetic life.
When Moussaoui dies, may he be greeted in hell by 72 old whores who all look like Yasser Arafat.
chsw
CGW, he's going to Florence, Colorado. The only federal supermax prison. It is like being buried alive, but as long as he is alive there will be those who try to free him.
I wonder how long 23 hours of solitary confinement and the harrassment he can take before he begins to crack and maybe , just maybe, he'll begin to realize his allah is just a pipe dream. allah can't save him. Of course he'll never admit it. I hope the prison officials don't point the way to mecca so he'll face his butt and his genitals toward it.
Shinoliite - you make a good point about Richard Reid and the others. If Richard Reid had been given the death penalty he would be hanging around on death row and never out of the news. As things are, you don't hear about him.
I'm with Wilypagan on juries. They are a check on the power of the state. Countries that don't have them are horrible places to live. Besides, if judges were "trained" in Islam, where would they be trained and by whom? However, the idea of juries deciding the sentence, as opposed to the verdict, strikes me as bizarre. This is a matter for the judge, surely? It is in the UK, anyway.
Welcome to JW/DW chsw. :)
I do not believe in the slightest that Moussaoui has any psychiatric disorder other than that all too common disorder(especially amongst Muslims): religious fanatacism.
Just because his whole presentation and his attitude seem eccentric to a western audience means nothing as we have seen here by the disjointed, unbalanced rants we have seen here from obvious Muslims.
Very few Muslims have a structured view of their own religion despite their obsession with it, as the koranic diarrhoea of detail drowns all but the strongest intellect in a mish mash of taboos and obligations.
The only consistent thing about Moussaoui and almost all muslims is his contempt for, anger with and hatred of the west.
He should have been given the death penalty and in great islamic tradition perhaps some of the relatives of 9/11 victims should have been polled to say just how.
"Any man who is under 30, and is not a liberal, has no heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a conservative, has no brains" -Winston Churchill
I have to agree with Sir Winston here.
We have a "covenant of fools" on the Left in this nation that are going to make us all victims if we do not start to speak out loud and clear as independents, conservatives, realists, rational-thinkers, Libertarians, etc. I see more and more that the "sympathy for the devil" that R. Spencer alludes to is perhaps our greatest immediate concern right now, and yet too little is being done about it. We are a nation of free speech and free thought, but more and more it is the Left that is becoming the new fascists. It is the Left that rampages self-righteously to the WRONG conclusions, time and time again. It is the Left that grins almost Cheshire like everytime it drives yet another nail into the coffin of Western Civilization. It is the Left that demonizes the "white man" and downtrods the "European" contribution to America. It is the Left that marches side by side with established enemies of the country like illegals and Communists. It is the Left that weakens our military's morale at every opportunity, either by denouncing them as criminals or by watering down their ranks with sexist and unrealistic demands in the oldest "boy's club" of all.
The PC establishment ran amock long ago, but now it could very well push us over the edge into the destruction of everything we hold dear if the current trends continue for another decade.
The Truth about this war has got to rise to the top of the mainstream soon or we will look back on these days and curse ourselves for having not strived even harder.
Peggy Noonan says
They should have killed him-
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110008330
If he gets to France, odds are he will be out in a couple of years.
"If you have a civil or criminal matter, wouldn't you prefer rolling the dice with a jury of your peers rather than a political appointee judge of any ilk?"
-- from a posting above
Is that the only choice? Either those "peers" or a "political appointee judge"? No judges anywhere -- not Holmes or Brandeis, not Augustus Hand, not Learned hand -- are always and everywhere "political appointees"? The jury system requires, depends upon, not only the intelligence and alertness of twelve people (are twelve people selected today at the same level as twelve people selected in 1840, or 1900, or 1940, or 1960? The jury system also assumes that twelve members of the public, without specialized knowledge, can understand the matter at hand. But some subjects have been recognized as too difficult. That is the reason for Tax Courts, for example. My point is this: cases involving promotion of the Jihad should only be decided by those who know a lot more about Islam than that it is called a "religion" and that it is, furthermore, a "religion" of "peace and tolerance." How do we know that? Because Muslims, and President Bush and some other Western leaders, keep telling us so. But the evidence suggests, the textual and historical evidence screams, otherwise.
But how are these judges to become experts in Islam? Where would they train?
I'd be happy for them to train by reading this website, but that's a bit unlikely.
I don't think Islam is all that difficult to understand. Many ordinary people knew that communism was evil, while many "intellectuals", who had read Das Kapital, thought it had a lot going for it.
I add my voice to those who raise the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate to the BBC for calling this travesty a victory for the rule of law. The cockroach Moussaoui (as Founding says) will now be given three square meals daily and have a guaranteed residence for the rest of his life, thanks to tens of thousands of dollars doled out by the American taxpayer.
Moussaoui is not crazy. He is just a follower of a crazed "religion" founded by someone who just may have been insane.
Is Moussaoui the crazy one?
The Suburban Crusader
Do tax courts & patent courts have juries? Wouldn't they need people who know tax laws inside out (only ex H&R Block employees or ex IRS agents need apply) or patent laws (meaning the juror must be a scientist, engineer with a strong foundation about the technical issues in question)? Which would probably eliminate impartial jurors, since the only jurors who would comprehend such cases would be those who know the amount that one would need to know to make a living out of it.
Tax isn't an ideology. Although open to some interpretation - creative accountants make a living from this - the questions are mainly of fact, albeit complex fact.
The correct approach, in my view, would be to change the law regarding Islam. Then jurors only have to decide whether someone has broken the law or not.
Start with charitable status for mosques. Islam is a political movement, not a religion.
Mama Mouse - Cry me a river! Playing the race card - how typical to trot out that argument when reason fails. Lets hope that in a day or so your sorry butt will find the oblivion it so richly deserves. As for Mr. Mouse I hope your "groundhog day" lasts for decades as your brain withers from boredom.
But that's not the issue here.
That system evolved in response to a belief - or rather demand - that non-one should be imprisoned without being found guilty by a jury of his peers.
Well, who's a peer to Moussai? Do we need twelve jihadists?
So far as I can see, the notion of a defendant's peers only makes sense within a domestic situation. This isn't one: it's a war.
The jury system isn't there because ordinary people are inherently good or anything like that. It's there because it was intended as a protection for the relatively less powerful against the relatively more powerful - you'd only be likely to be found guilty if you actually were, if people of your own station were assessing the evidence. It made sense against the background of a fairly stable society with a common culture. IOt may still make sense for somestic crime. That's not what we've got here.
I think Walid Phares at the Counterrorism Blog has it right, when he says; "wrong court, wrong debate". Here's the link:
MOUSSAOUI: WRONG COURT, WRONG DEBATE.
For IOt read It.
For somestic read domestic
Military, not civilian trial.
One week, judgment time.
Firing squad or noose.
Not this now-familiar version of the "misunderstanding of the conditions of war" trial.
Moussaoui was a spy, terrorist and saboteur caught during a mission in a time of war.
You don't treat agents of a global jihad war-making group the way you do pickpockets, purse snatchers and identity thieves.
They are assassins, and terrorist enemy irregulars, and can be executed as such.
This colossal misunderstanding of "the nature of the crime", by all of the Judiciary, is crippling our fight against of these hardcore bastards.
May Moussaoui choke on a sheep's eyeball in solitary.
And think:
"Maybe it was a pig's!"
as he passes toward rectitude.
As, apparently, the only one here who has spent some time in one of our country's finer greybar motels, I have a better idea of what Moussaoui is in for. Let me tell you, I've seen nothing like what a lifer has to endure every morning when he wakes up and starts his sentence all over again. I was there for a long time, but not forever. And I can tell you the feeling of it can only be described as sickness, like living with constant nausea, utterly without respite. I've done time "in the hole", several months worth. And the thought of having to do it _forever_ sends shudders down my spine. Believe me, I'd rather take my chances in population where I have to sleep with my eyes open and be ready to fight for my life at any given moment. The whole idea of prison being some sort of cushy semi-punishment makes me chuckle. Only, _only_ people who have never experienced it (and that group does include guards or other correctional personnel--they go home every day) could think it to be so. And even the most hardened maniac criminals who some might think would enjoy it are dying to get out. Look at the law books sometime and see the huge number of appeals filed by inmates every year. There isn't a convict alive who wouldn't sell a lung, a kidney, and both his legs to taste freedom again. And the bitterest pill of all is simply knowing he won't.
The lifers call a life sentence a 'slow death sentence'.
So, am I some sort of criminal apologist, a hand-wringer who is trying to evoke sympathy for this poor misbegotten neglected man, by telling you about the living death he will endure?
Hell, no! I want you to be happy about it! Like many others I was so sickened by 9/11 I wanted us to turn Afghanistan into a blood-streaked parking lot. And have that be just the beginning. But alas, we are a civilized people and have to settle for lesser forms of satisfaction. For the Koran-spewing drones, ignore them if they don't bother us, mow them down en masse without mercy if they do. But for the select few who rise to heights of fame or noteriety, something more delicious would be in order.
Bin Ladin, Zawahiri, leaders and noted lieutenants, even Mous-whatever now that he is known throughout the world, I would do with them what Stalin would have done with Hitler had he caught him alive: bring them home and put them on display in a little cage for our people to laugh at.
What could possibly offend the arrogant Mo-nazis more than scorn? And nobody will be laughing harder at Mousszz...etc, sitting like a little monkey in his cage, than I. Because I _know_.
Note* Mdm. Moussaoui decries her son's fate as "Worse than death." Yes. And?
Note2* The only possible rain on this parade would be if some weak-hearted prig in the White House actually _allowed_ Mouz to be moved out of his hole and sent to France. But even Gore wouldn't have done that. (Would he?)
D-con definitely makes me start to believe that my stance on this particular issue was the right one. Let the "Mouse" rot. We have bigger issues to contend with.
So the jury was willing to entertain the circumstances of Moussaoi's (right - this is impossible to spell - its Mouse from hereon) - er, the circumstances of Mouse's upbringing, for the reason that such circumstances were viewed as "mitigating factors". But what is a "mitigating factor" really? It's something which is viewed as being "deterministic" ultimately, in a scientific, behavioral sense - something which "causes" Mouse to press that lever (heh:-) and since something in Mouse's upbringing presumably CAUSED him to press that lever, the assumption is that Mouse isn't entirely responsible for pressing it.
But instead of his upbringing causing Mouse to press that lever, what if it was ISLAM that caused him to press that lever? What if he believed so completely in Islam - that it was right and good and true and that his soul would be saved if he pressed that lever - that Islam itself became the essentially "deterministic" cause in his pressing that lever?
Then how would "islam" in this deterministic equation be any different from his "brutal childhood"? (unlike mice, human beings have complex thoughts which are capable of causing them to press levers). And if there is no difference - if ideologies can cause human mice to press levers same as hunger or a cruel childhood, then why not go straight to the heart of the matter? Why not go straight to the heart of the actual deterministic CAUSE in this case - which is Islam?
Why not just cut to the chase and note, from a scientific, deterministic perspective - that Islam was the reason that Mouse pressed the lever?
Some lawyers have already done this. I can't rcall the precise cases right now but they have attempted to defend clients on the grounds that they were doing what Islam commanded (this was in Turkey I believe). And truthfully, this is as valid a defense (from a deterministic POV) as bringing up Mouse's childhood deprivations. Determinism is determinism. People kill because of their ideologies, which they passionately believe in, just as much as they kill because of their lousy childhoods. There's nothing new about that. In fact the death toll due to ideologies is no doubt much MUCH larger than the death toll due to lousy childhoods.
But now imagine a case in which a Nazi was living in the west, dressed in his uniform and he goes and kills some Jews or gypsies or Catholics. When we ask why he did it, he tells us - Its because I'm a Nazi - I believe in Nazism. Surely that's a deterministic cause which led him to press the lever? We could also try to explore his abusive early childhood in order to find a further deterministic cause - the reason he became a Nazi in the first place.
But would we do that? No. We wouldn't do that. And if not, then why not? The reason we wouldn't do that is because he would be standing there in his uniform. And his standing there in that uniform would automatically nullify all our other attempts to seek deterministic causes. What we would understand by him standing in that uniform is that the MAN IS AT WAR. AT WAR WITH US.
Back to Mouse. Mouse doesn't wear a uniform. But is the situation all that confusing because he doesn't have an outfit on? Because he doesn't play formal "dress-up"? Apparently it is, to judge by the way this trial proceeded. When Mouse declares, however, that he is a mujahideen, in so many loud vocal words - what he is ipso facto doing is "putting on a uniform". Mouse is at war and it is merely the fact that he isn't standing there in a uniform that causes the confusion which drives people to look for "mitigating", deterministic causes.
There are now numerous Muslims in the west wearing that "invisible uniform". Judging from this trial there are evidently a whole lot of people who need to put on a pair of those "special glasses" - like the ones that we kids used to believe could see THROUGH clothes, only in this case its the reverse. These are special glasses that allow one to SEE clothes - namely uniforms - that are otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
Shinoliite,
With all the hand-wringing over abu Gribe and Gitmo I wonder. Here's hoping I'm wrong.
Hugh and Yojimbo -
Good points regarding specialized courts and the cultural base of the jury system. In fact, U.S. immigration courts do not have juries. If Islam were legally outlawed as an enemy political system, it would be simple enough to deport all Muslims, in the same way the U.S. has, in the past deported Nazis and other undesireables.
Our legal system has covered itself in glory once again when it comes to capital crimes.
Unfortunately for the country, but not for Moussaoui, this had nothing to do with U.S. criminal law.
This clown was an enemy combatant, in this country to commit what is a war crime, the mass slaughter of civilians.
A quick military tribunal and a short drop of the hangman's rope was what he deserved, not room and board at government expense forever.
cactus: "A quick military tribunal and a short drop of the hangman's rope was what he deserved, not room and board at government expense forever."
IMO the quick military tibunal is not only what he deserved, the quick drop at the hangman's noose was the punishment most fitting his crime. All those who tried so hard to give him the "criminal trial", imagining it to be the most humane course, have actually sentenced him to a fate worse than death. When you say "not room and board, etc..., I'm not sure whether you imagine that existence is a fate worse than death or not (or whether your main concern is the taxpayer's expense, which is certainly a reasonable consideration). Personally, I don't care to give a man a fate worse than death, especially when it comes at the taxpayer's expense.
If people weren't so darned confused they would recognize that the man was at war, and that he consequently warranted a military tribunal, and that the most fitting punishment for his crime (being at war with us) was a quick death, whether by hanging or elsewise. But because there are so many people who apparently refuse to acknowledge that Islam is at war with us, they insist on treating Mouse as a sociopath. That confusion in turn leads to the bizarre circumstance whereby folks think they are doing someone a favor by refusing to put the defendant before a military tribunal and instead insisting he be put before a civil court, which treats him as a sociopath and sentences him to eternal life in prison. Frankly, I would prefer a quick execution, as would take place in a military tribunal. I think that is the punishment which most truly fits the crime. I couldn't care less whether Mouse thinks he has "won" or "lost". Muslims spin everything, no matter how absurd, into a scenario in which they have "won". That ought to be abundantly obvious by now. We can't worry about that. We can only worry about what is really just. And personally, I think that Mouse being quickly hung by a military tribunal would have been JUST- given his actual crimes.
Ironically though, those folks who shrank (shrunk?) from that obvious course in favor of what they imagined to be a "fair" trial and a "just" sentence are the ones who have, in fact, sentenced him to hell.