BCT Editorial – 3/30/06

This page was last updated on March 30, 2006.

Jail time; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 30, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“It’s quite clear that Zacarias Moussaoui wants to die as a martyr to his faith.

“Why let the al-Qaida conspirator have his wish by executing him for his conduct leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America?

“Why fulfill his heavenly dreams?

“Why give radical Muslims a martyr to the cause?

“Moussaoui has testified that he was supposed to fly a hijacked plane into the White House on that fateful day. He also has admitted to knowing about the plans for (but not the details of) 9/11 before they happened.

“His testimony is important because the federal government, which is seeking the death penalty, has argued that the attacks could have been thwarted if Moussaoui had cooperated.

“In his testimony, Moussaoui practically signed his own death warrant.

“Why give him what he wants?

“Instead of executing him, stick him in a maximum security federal prison and throw away the key, thereby depriving him of his much sought after martyrdom and radical Muslims of another suicide hero.

“Make him pay for his crimes by living a long, miserable life behind bars, the last thing in the world he wants to have happen to him.

“One more advantage to denying Moussaoui’s death wish would be to show the Islamic world that the Judeo-Christian values that many Americans preach are practiced as well.”

[RWC] This is one of those cases in which a writer wrote one too many sentences.

I found myself agreeing with the editorial until I read the last sentence. Yeah, I know, I should have known better.

First, the sentence asserts anyone who supports the death penalty doesn’t practice “Judeo-Christian values.” Second, it doesn’t help to send messages to “the Islamic world” when no one there reads or understands them. No country has done more to defend Muslims (Kosovo, Somalia, et cetera) than the U.S., yet we remain the enemy. Who is defending Muslims in Iraq and who is killing them and blowing up their mosques?

It turns out the editorial author only wants to keep Moussaoui in jail because the author apparently opposes the death penalty.