We fail to execute a terrorist who proudly proclaims his fervent wish to kill us. And worse, we failed after trying him like a criminal defendant with rights to be defended:
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only operative apprehended in the U.S. for al Qaeda's act of war, was indicted. A French national steeled in the terror network's Afghan proving grounds and interrupted while training to fly a jumbo jet into a building full of Americans, Moussaoui would be treated as a civilian defendant -- presumed innocent, protected by the Constitution, and free to use the courts as a tool in the war against us.
The outcome, however predictable, was astounding nonetheless. On Wednesday, a federal jury in Alexandria voted against imposing the death penalty, despite having found Moussaoui culpable for his involvement in acts of savagery that dwarf any for which capital punishment has ever been meted out in U.S. history. Worse, upon eschewing the only rationalizations most trial observers believed could arguably support such a verdict (e.g., that death would make him a "martyr," while life imprisonment would somehow be a more fitting comeuppance), jurors relied on the lamest of justifications: Moussaoui had a rough childhood.
While we find ourselves unwilling to kill an enemy, our enemies continue to quickly and ruthlessly kill even innocents:
Muslim journalist Atwar Bahjat of Al-Arabiya television, was brutally murdered on February 22 at the age of 30, and The London Times has an extremely detailed and gory story of a film showing how she died. According to reports, two men in military uniforms stripped her to the waist, then her arms were bound behind her back. She is blindfolded with a white bandage that is stained with blood running from a wound on the left side of her head.
A large man in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8" blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.
Her cries — "Ah, ah, ah" — can be heard above the "Allahu akbar" intoned by the person capturing the murder on video. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark shirt and camouflage trousers places his right boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.
The executioner then proceeds with beheading her, dropping her head to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the viewing audience.
In addition, sources also say that Bahjat had nine drill holes in her right arm and ten in her left. The drill had also been applied to her legs, her navel and her right eye. It is not clear whether this horrific torture was done before or after she died.
The enemy acts like it is at war. We don't.
Rough childhood? God help us all if this truly represents the thinking of our society.
Refusing to kill our enemies doesn't mean we are better than our enemies. It means we are stupid.
