Moussaoui and McVeigh

I was on the treadmill yesterday afternoon when I saw the screen flash the news that Moussaoui was going to get life imprisonment.

There will be much debate on whether or not this was the right decision and some will complain to the jury about it. However, that is the system.

I have been thinking about this for a long while. I recall when Timothy McVeigh was sentenced the death penalty for the OKC bombing. My thought at that time was that McVeigh needed to die to heal the wounds of the country. An American killing Americans as an act of terrorism as horrible as it felt, he needed to die. I remember when he was executed. The sun rose the next morning and there was nothing different with the world. The anger, the hatred, the violence, the grief all still hung in the air. His death did not heal the country, it did not restore life, and it seemed to me from my point of view to do nothing. I felt no great joy nor great sadness over his death. He was just dead.

As Moussaoui was denied the death penalty and the chance to be a martyr, I really had been thinking about McVeigh a lot. Killiing Moussaoui was going to do nothing to end terrorism in this world. Killing Moussaoui was not going to ressurect towers or people. His death would not change the world for better or worse, it would mean nothing.

His life in imprisoned, perhaps he will feel the power of a country who has given him a life that is really no life at all. All bars, hard concrete, and a sliver of light. Also some of the worst food in the world. I am not sure on all of this, but I know from last experience of death penalty and national justice...the world did not change when a terrorist was executed. If it did, the world changed for the worst.

Fearless Joy,
Guido