Zacarias Moussaoui’s trial is in its sentencing phase, and his lawyers are finally hitting their stride in their attempts to keep the needle out of his vein. According to today’s Washington Post,Michael First, who edits the standard diagnostic manual for the mental health profession, testified in federal court in Alexandria that Moussaoui suffers from delusions and disorganized speech – two of the five symptoms of a paranoid schizophrenic.
First’s diagnosis followed testimony yesterday from clinical psychiatrist Xavier Amador that Moussaoui has paranoid schizophrenia and is delusional. Amador pointed to Moussaoui’s belief that his attorneys are conspiring to kill him.
Moussaoui is the only person charged in the United States in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks by al-Qaeda terrorists. He pleaded guilty in April 2005 to conspiracy charges, and his defense has been trying to convince the jury he should be spared a death sentence because he is mentally ill.
So Moussaoui is a nut-case, and therefore shouldn’t be executed. Additional experts have testified that he had an unhappy childhood, was abused by his father, and suffered from post-natal stress syndrome (all right, I made that last one up, but you get the idea).
His attorneys are providing him with the standard All-American red-white-and-blue legal defense – “I’m not responsible for my actions because I have X Syndrome” – but Moussaoui isn’t buying it. “It’s a lot of American BS,” he said.
We’ve come to a strange pass, when a statement of the most lambent clarity has to come from an admitted Al Qaeda terrorist.
And, yes, it’s come to this,
It’s come to this,
And wasn’t it a long way down,
Wasn’t it a strange way down?
– Leonard Cohen, “Dress Rehearsal Rag”
Isn’t it about time to say good-bye to the law-enforcement approach in the war on “terrorism”? If nothing else illustrates the farce of this strategy, surely the fatuity of the Moussaoui trial does.
If the modern human-rights sensibility holds sway in our dealings with Islamic terrorists, it leads us to the following:
- You can’t shoot them.
- You can’t intern them at Guantanamo.
- You can’t return them to their dusty fly-specked countries of origin, because the repressive Islamic regimes there might not treat them right.
- They get the same legal rights as a full-blown American citizen in a court of law.
- They get a court-appointed lawyer, paid for by you, the American taxpayer, a lawyer who can make motions and petition for change of venue and do all those lawyerly things for years and years until his client dies of old age, or the Shari’ah is finally instituted here in the United States, whichever comes first.
- Failing all the above, they can be declared insane, and then
- In five or ten years’ time a compassionate federal judge can intervene to order their release.
But I’ll buy the idea that Moussaoui is nuts. Heck, I’ll buy the idea that the entirety of Islam is nuts. Whether you think the Twelfth Imam is calling the shots from the bottom of a well, or that 72 virgins await you in Paradise if you just shred some Jews with nails and rat poison, you’re pretty crazy. Maybe Islam needs to don a collective straitjacket and undergo intensive psychotherapy for several centuries in order to get better.
And maybe anybody who really believes in their religion is nuts.
But somehow Christianity and Judaism must have evolved a cultural version of an anti-psychotic drug, so that their followers can look and act sane, and lead normal lives as productive members of the community. So that believers like me can go out in public without scaring the children or peeing in the potted plants.
But not Islam. The only Muslims who are regularly taking their medicine are the ones who live in the West, or have come into long-term contact with it. And not even all of them.
So, insane or otherwise, let’s stop dealing with the mujahideen as criminals. Insane or otherwise, people who conspire to fly passenger jets into our skyscrapers are not criminals.
They are the Enemy, and this is the Long War.
6 comments:
I like, very much, the idea that they go into therapy for a few centuries.
In fact, I am going to be quite literal about this.
Think about it:
1)We know that the Islamic world can not be trusted to produce decent government.
2) We know that the Islamic world produces a disproportionate amount of bad human beings, from terrorists to honor killers, to anti-Semites.
3) We are beginning to see that our Democracy Project in Iraq and Afghanistan is not yielding fruit.
4) We know that Realpolitik (he may be a thug, but he's our thug) does not work in the Islamic world.
5) We know that MAD won't work, because they crave martydom.
6) We know that containment won't work, because they are more than willing to cross borders and kill us using terrorist tactics.
7) We know that we don't want to nuke the entire Islamic world.
So, forgive me if I haven't forgotten any options, but it seems to me there may be only one option left; longterm colonization of the Islamic world, with a strict rule against any Muslim immigration in the West.
In fact, it seems to me that, at a certain point (say, for instance, if we get hit with a nuclear or biological terrorist attack), we might even entertain the idea of mass deportations to go along with our colonization.
Call these, Thoughts Out of Season, if you will.
But, if we look at the lesson of 9/11, which is that they will do whatever they can to kill as many of us as they can, then we can see where this may very well lead.
What do you think, Baron?
All very well for people with understanding to lay it on the line, but that doesn't get us anywhere as long as a substantial part of the at-risk population buys into the Religon of Peace idea.
So before you can start thinking about what you might do if all the civilized people were on the same page (deport Muslims from America, for example), you need a strategy to bring the skeptics into the fold.
Every organization has a program, whether it's Islam, Infidel Bloggers or the Friday Night Keglers at the Fairlanes Bowlarama. The confusion is not in Moussaoui's mind; he knows exactly what he is about. We just think he's nuts. Obviously, he is not.
Query: How to persuade people who do not think in the same frames of reference as a Muslim to figure this out?
One way -- my suggestion -- is to carefully document the fact of Islam's program. Not by referring to the Koran or hadith; they are self-contradictory.
I happened to run across a pertinenet example just yesterday. Ahmedinijad has been getting press for his remarks about exterminating Israel. Part of the interest has been the apparent novelty of a head of state calling for the destruction of another country, something not seen since the 1930s.
But in Geraldine Brooks' 'Nine Parts of Desire,' published in 1994, exactly the same statements that are today being made by Ahmedinijad were being made by one of Brooks' informants, a (then) youngish Iranian Muslim woman.
A careful documentation of such programmatic statements, without the vituperation that usually goes along with it (that is, without the LGF effect) might open the door to strategies such as Pastorius wants debated.
Or not. I dunno. The appeasers are very comfortable in their security blankets.
Pastorius -- see my reply at GoV.
Mustafa,
That's quite a list! I should post it at my blog. If you have any further input, email me @
AlwaysOnWatch@aol.com , and we can coordinate efforts.
One of the ironies of the Moussaoui trial is that Moussaoui himself is telling the West about the dangers. But his defense attorneys are busy trying to make excuses for him.
Mustafa, you might be mostly right, but that isn't what I'm getting at.
An attack on the premises of the religion is not going to persuade the unpersuaded. Muslims really can point to passages in the Koran that sound nice. Those are there, and they will always tend to resonate with spiritual people who look to scriptures for guidance. And that's a lot of people, probably a majority.
Talking about what Muslims did in the 8th century is also not going to persuade the unpersuaded.
Going to ibloga.blogspot and telling each other how awful Islam is does not expand the population of people who accept that Islam is awful.
The program of ibloga.blogspot is (I think) to reveal the program of Islam as something worrisome. Perhaps I mistake. (I've read the statement at the top of the page; that's a position statement, it is not a program.)
If that is the ibloga program, it is not going over very well.
It would be better, seems to me, to elucidate aspects of the actual, here-and-now (not 8th century) program of Islam. That is, what are they up to?
Is part of their program to suspend free speech? Yes.
How about their attitude toward apostasy? Do they have a program for that? You bet they do.
You could also pose the question in the reverse sense: What parts of the program of Islam envisage living in harmony with non-Muslims? What would that entail?
Pastorius and I wrote the postion statement to be a position statement. From there we need a programme, and that will come legitimately from discussion, organically. It will come organically from bloggers and contributors and readers; but it will mean very little if all we do is write comments to each other and nothing more; therefore, I encourage all of you, commentators and readers and vistiors alike, to meet your fellows in person to make real and concrete contact in order to effect genuine action in your communities and nations.
Each Thursday evening from 7-9:00 pm we in Vancouver, Canada meet at the Vancouver Public Library in the atrium to discuss Islam, Left dhimmi fascism, and our best ideas on how to spread the word and fight against these destructive movements. This Thursday evening will be our 15th meeting.
Recently we have begun to focus onour particular city and the nation to spread the word as directly and with as much focus as we can. I suggest that if you wish to make a real thing happen in the real world that you too find fellow bloggers in your area by searching the blogs for your place, blogs that will appeal to you and you to them, and that you invite those fellow bloggers for coffee in a public place to discuss mutual concerns.
We here have become good friends over the course of our meetings. It's a personal gain for all of us, and it is also a gain for the world of free people, may I be so bold as to claim. Our meetings come to something real, and the advantages are in our hands. We will grow and expand into a political force that will change the nature of our world. It's a real thing to have these meetings. It's solid and physical and empirical. It's essential. And it's fun.
Maccusgermanis has meetings in Alabama weekly. T-Ham does so in New York. Others in other places do the same. The French, though many have ill regard for them, are the ones who began this. They, not Americans, began the meetings of like-minded democrats and freedom fighters.
Where are the Americans? Where are the Christians? They are waiting for you to call them out and organise a place for them to join you.
We will be in Vancouver, Canada at the public libreary from 7-9:00 pm in the atrium. You'll know who we are becausse like the French we wear blue scarves to announce our positions. If, like so many Americans have complained, you're shy about wearing a blue scarf, go naked. It matters not what you wear but that you stand up and expose yourself as a person who is dedicated to and determined to working for democracy and Human freedom. If you hide, then don't expect others to do much more than you. And don't complain if your grandchildren have to fight the fight you refuse to fight yourself.
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