Terrorist Therapy

The Zacarias Moussaoui trial has ended in controversy. Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison. The judge responded to his outburst by telling him that he had not "won." But that really should not be the point.

If Moussaoui was indeed a participant in the 9/11 events in any significant way, the Nuremberg principles should apply. As a war combatant he should be eligible for rhe death penalty. All of the psychological mumbo jumbo should have been irrelvant. His tough treatment in his family and his mistreatment by the French when he was a whipper snapper should not have been used to explain his behavior or to mitigate it. We need to develop a system to deal with these kinds of issues and soon. It should not have taken almost five years to deal with the legal issues.

But in my mind there still might be a reason why his sentence was appropriate. First, we prevented him from being a martyr. Second, the lead up to his execution would have been prolonged and would have allowed a lot of opportunities for all sorts of pleaders to yack about the issue - from all points of view. Third, by putting him into the supermax prison he becomes invisible. How many times have you heard of Ted Kaczynski since he went there? Perhaps, although I was bothered by all of the people who talked about our humane treatment of this person, we came to the right decision. Even if we did we should do something to deal with the future iterations of how we will deal with terrorists when they are captured. It would be absurd to use the same logic for Osama.