Posted on 05/07/2006 6:17:09 AM PDT by xjcsa
May 7, 2006
BY MARK STEYN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
"America, you lose," said Zacarias Moussaoui as he was led away from the court last week.
Hard to disagree. Not just because he'll be living a long life at taxpayers' expense. He'd have had a good stretch of that even if he'd been "sentenced to death," which in America means you now spend more years sitting on Death Row exhausting your appeals than the average "life" sentence in Europe. America "lost" for a more basic reason: turning a war into a court case and upgrading the enemy to a defendant ensures you pretty much lose however it turns out. And the notion, peddled by some sappy member of the ghastly 9/11 Commission on one of the cable yakfests last week, that jihadists around the world are marveling at the fairness of the U.S. justice system, is preposterous. The leisurely legal process Moussaoui enjoyed lasted longer than America's participation in the Second World War. Around the world, everybody's enjoying a grand old laugh at the U.S. justice system.
Except for Saddam Hussein, who must be regretting he fell into the hands of the Iraqi justice system. Nine out of 12 U.S. jurors agreed that the "emotional abuse" Moussaoui suffered as a child should be a mitigating factor. Saddam could claim the same but his jury isn't operating to the legal principles of the Oprahfonic Code. However, if we ever catch Mullah Omar or the elderly Adolf Hitler or pretty much anyone else we're at war with, they can all cite the same list of general grievances as Moussaoui.
He did, in that sense, hit the jackpot. We think of him as an "Islamic terrorist," an Arab, but he is, in fact, a product of the Western world: raised in France, radicalized in Britain, and now enjoying a long vacation in America. The taxpayers of the United Kingdom subsidized his jihad training while he was on welfare in London. Now the taxpayers of the United States will get to chip in, too.
On the afternoon of Sept. 11, as the Pentagon still burned, Donald Rumsfeld told the president, "This is not a criminal action. This is war."
That's still the distinction that matters. By contrast, after the 2005 London bombings, Boris Johnson, the Conservative member of Parliament, wrote a piece headlined "Just Don't Call It War." Johnson objected to the language of "war, whether military or cultural . . . Last week's bombs were placed not by martyrs nor by soldiers, but by criminals."
Sorry, but that's the way to lose. A narrowly focused "criminal" approach means entrusting the whole business to the state bureaucracy. The obvious problem with that is that it's mostly reactive: blow somewhere up, we'll seal it off, and detectives will investigate it as a crime scene, and we'll arrest someone, and give him legal representation, and five years later when the bombing's faded into memory we'll bring him to trial, and maybe conviction, and appeal of the conviction, and all the rest. A "criminal" approach gives terrorists all the rights of criminals, including the "Gee, Officer Krupke" defense: I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived. If you fight this thing as a law enforcement matter, Islamist welfare queens around the world will figure there's no downside to jihad: After all, you're living on public welfare in London plotting the downfall of the infidel. If it all goes horribly wrong, you'll be living on public welfare in Virginia, grandstanding through U.S. courtrooms for half a decade. What's to lose?
It's a very worn cliche to say that America is over-lawyered, but the extent of that truism only becomes clear when you realize how overwhelming is our culture's reflex to cover war as just another potential miscarriage-of-justice story. I was interested to see that the first instinct of the news shows to the verdict was to book some relative of the 9/11 families and ask whether they were satisfied with the result. That's not what happened that Tuesday morning. The thousands who were killed were not targeted as individuals. They died because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to kill Mrs. Smith. Their families have a unique claim to our sympathy and a grief we can never truly share, but they're not plaintiffs and war isn't a suit. It's not about "closure" for the victims; it's about victory for the nation. Try to imagine the bereaved in the London blitz demanding that the Germans responsible be brought before a British court.
Agreeing to fight the jihad with subpoenas is, in effect, a declaration that you're willing to plea bargain. Instead of a Churchillian "we will never surrender!", it's more of a "Well, the judge has thrown out the mass murder charges, but the DA says we can still nail him on mail fraud."
And, even if the defendant loses the case, does that mean the state wins? Here's an Associated Press story from a few weeks ago recounting yet another tremendous victory for the good guys in the war on terror:
"A Paris court fined the terrorist known as 'Carlos the Jackal' more than $6,000 Tuesday for saying in a French television interview that terror attacks sometimes were 'necessary.' The 56-year-old Venezuelan, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was convicted of defending terrorism. The court did not convict him for expressing pleasure that 'the Great Satan' -- the United States -- suffered the Sept. 11 attacks, saying those comments were his personal reaction."
That's right, folks. The French state brought a successful hate-speech prosecution against Carlos the Jackal, albeit not as successful as they wanted:
"Prosecutors asked for a fine four times larger than the $6,110 penalty imposed. But the judges said they did not see the need for a higher fine because Ramirez's comments referred to the past and aimed to justify his own actions. Ramirez, dressed in a red shirt and blue blazer, kissed the hand of his partner and lawyer, Isabelle Coutant-Peyre, during the judgment."
Coming soon to a theater near you: The Day of the Jackal's Hate-Speech Appeal Hearing.
Copyright © Mark Steyn, 2006
IBTP
ping...
Just want to know we are all talking about the same thing.
I still think the way to deal with these guys is to put them on a catapault and fling them about 200 feet through the air into a concrete wall where they would slide to the bottom and be siezed upon by about a dozen hogs that are fenced in.
It might sound kinda cruel, but 80% of Americans support catapault punishment.
Steyn goes straight to the heart of the matter. It's war, not a Quickie-Mart robbery gone bad.
Call me old fashioned, but as soon as he was caught, I would have taken Moussaoui outside, doused him with gasoline and set him on fire. That is the only type of justice terrorists understand, and anything less is considered weakness.
The war on terror is not a real war.
If it was a real war, we would have declared war.
If it was a real war, we would have already executed a number of traitors in the media and congress.
If it was a real war, we would have already hit Syria, Iran and North Korea.
On Sept 12, 2001 I wrote all of my congresspeople demanding a declaration of war and they did not do it. Instead they chickened out and gave "authorization of force" because they did not want the white house to have the ability to actually engage in war.
We should have declared war on Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea immediately and hit all of their capitols with cruise missles when our surveillance indicated they were full of their evil leadership.
I don't know man...life in supermax? Even 10 years in supermax. Might be better off dead. I think people are getting a little hysterical over this.
I'm wondering why nobody was saying this when Ramsey Yusef was sentenced? He was a lot more important than Al Qeada groupie, Mousssoui.
The Japanese Army general of the Philippines received quick justice when the US finally got him. There was no snickering about American fairness.
We are still rounding up Nazis and bringing them to justice, but that bonehead Moussaoui jury had no stomach for justice. It's very disturbing.
Steyn nails it again!
Speaking to Vremya Novostei, Nikolai Zlobin, the director for Russian and Asian programs of the Washington Institute of World Security, said that the U.S. legal system is precedent-based and “quite a few things” have been tested during the Moussaoui trial. “The sentence will lay solid foundations of future trials to punish fanatics like Moussaoui. I hope to see such trials take place in the future,” said Zlobin.
Pravda ( Moussaoui's life sentence: why not death penalty? )
A narrowly focused "criminal" approach means entrusting the whole business to the state bureaucracy. The obvious problem with that is that it's mostly reactive . . . gives terrorists all the rights of criminals . . .Agreeing to fight the jihad with subpoenas is, in effect, a declaration that you're willing to plea bargain. Instead of a Churchillian "we will never surrender!", it's more of a "Well, the judge has thrown out the mass murder charges, but the DA says we can still nail him on mail fraud."
This is a very unsatisfying article. It is more of a whine or a lament than commentary, because Steyn leaves unwritten his proposals for dealing with . . . well, if they're not criminals, what are they? Prisoners of War? Then, prisoners of what war? Processed under the authority of what American law? Just what is Steyn advocating? Summary executions? Maybe he's suggesting we model "terror justice" after Franco's military tribunals which followed the Spanish Civil War? What?
Perhaps illegal combatants; the equivalent of spies. Summary execution would be perfectly within the bounds of "international law" in that case. So would military tribunals.
Uh, how about enemy combatants attempting to murder innocents? How about brutal killers operating outside the Geneva Conventions and outside the rules of warfare and thus deserving of a swift military trial and--if found guilty--a swift execution? Or would you prefer a little counseling followed by some really neat rehabilitation followed by a book tour?
Good grief.
We went to see United 93 last night and when the movie was over I asked my husband the same question. Why in hell is Ramzi Yusef in prison and not rotting in the ground?
We walked out of that movie, #1 in tears and #2 totally furious. These people need to be wiped off the earth.
I don't think Steyn is advocating anything. He is simply stating that Western Civilization has become so civilized that it can no longer deal effectively with barbarians. And if this inability continues, as it will, the West will inevitably fall to the barbarians as did the Roman Empire.
The way things are going, I feel like taking my little family and retreating to some hidden cove in the mountains, where we'll hold out as long as we can. Kind of like at the Alamo.
Where's our jail cams so we can make sure they are in solitary?
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