It’s About Us, Not Them
Bush:
Mr. Moussaoui got a fair trial; the jury convicted him to life in prison, where he’ll spend the rest of his life. In so doing, they spared his life, which is something that he evidently wasn’t willing to do for innocent American citizens.
You know that when Bush said this, he badly wished that he could have pulled the switch on the electric chair or the gallows trapdoor personally, as would many Americans. I was listening to the Penn Jillette show after the verdict, and he had a lot of bloodthirsty callers talking about the various ways that Moussaoui could be tortured in prison–some pretty vicious stuff. And when the headlines ran, they had the same wording they often do when a convicted prisoner is spared the death sentence. They read that he “gets” life. The oft-heard bitter comment from the family member of a victim, “my loved one got death, and the killer got life.”
Notwithstanding the questionable boon of spending one’s life in prison, I am somewhat dismayed by the lack of public consideration that perhaps we are not the angels of vengeance. The fact that we are so ready and willing to do such terrible things ourselves–even in rage–is not exactly a healthy sign.
Bush may have been grimly cynical when he commented that we showed Moussaoui mercy where he would not have, and without a doubt Bush, like many others, hates this outcome; but I believe that mercy is something we should aspire to. Okay, perhaps Bush is a bad measuring stick here, the man is brutal and clearly is not troubled by having the blood of so many on his hands. But shouldn’t most Americans, shouldn’t most people everywhere, be better than that–or at least aspire to be better?
After all, isn’t the whole point here that we are better than the terrorists? A moral high ground which, apparently, we are all too willing to abandon in the heat of anger. We do things we know are immoral or wrong, but we see them as justifiable if they are done in response to someone else’s doing them.
Nothing anyone else does excuses our own actions, with the sole exception of self-defense. But when self-defense is no longer in play, when we can simply walk away and do no more than is necessary to protect ourselves, what remains is unexcused, no matter what our pain and suffering may be.
This goes strongly against what we have learned all our lives, but I am convinced that vengeance, this sense that we can do immoral harm because immoral harm was done to us, is the greatest obstacle to peace, civilization–to human advancement. Give up that one flaw, and we can make ourselves better than would be possible by addressing any other single shortcoming of the human race.
The way I saw it, is that Moussaoui felt sorry for himself that he could not be a martyr too, and he obviously tried his best to get the maximum punishment possibly.
His crime was basically that he WANTED to sacrifice his life in a terrorist attack. He was planning to commit a crime, but didn’t.
If (possibly, maybe) knowing what was the plan, and not telling the police about it (didn’t they tell him “you have the right to remain silence”?) deserves the death penalty…….
Then how about all these people that knew Katrina was coming, but didn’t act upon it?
Hi Luis,
I once asked a Japanese man if he believed in the death penalty. His answer was most interesting. He said he believed in it (for truly terrible crimes–murder, mass murder, etc) because IF his child had been the one to commit the terrible crimes, as a father he would feel bound to kill his child. I was shocked at his answer but in a weird way it kind of made sense. He (as a father) was taking responsibility for his child’s actions in the most complete way. Didnt matter to him that his child may have already achieved adulthood.
I dont have any kids so I can’t exactly understand his position but I had to acknowledge it was a new idea for me.
Food for thought,
matthew
Hey Luis, Hey Matthew,
Matthew, I find that statement very interesting. It reminds me when I read (was it on this blog?) that “not forgetting the past not to repeat it” was supposed to mean not forgetting one own’s mistakes, and not those others had done unto us. (japanese not forgetting hiroshima but forgetting nanking, americans not forgetting 9/11, but forgetting the tokyo firebombings, chinese not forgetting nanking, but forgetting tibet, etc).
The comment of your japanese friend sounds very similar to me: you cannot defend the death penalty (or any justice penalty really) if your aren’t willing to submit yourself and those under your responsability to it. It is very easy to say other people, specially people you don’t know, must die.
This probably wasn’t what you meant by “food for thought”, but was the first thing that came to my mind.
Claus