American Broadside

Moussaoui: Why Life Is Better Than Death

This morning I was reminded of how time passes, often unobserved, until something happens that draws our attention to it. It wasn't the Moussaoui verdict, life in prison rather than the death penalty: the Moussaoui affair is just one grain of sand on the beach of history.

Rather, it was something that occurs every day and that most of us take for granted, the sun rose.

I start my day early, feeding the cats, fixing coffee, and sitting in my home office reading the online news. The two windows by my desk face east and the early morning sunlight streams through the trees in front of our house and into my office, projecting constantly shifting patterns of gold and shadow into the room. During the winter, the sun rises far to the south, so that the my computer monitor is washed in light and I have to lower the blinds to eliminate the glare.

Today, the sun rose farther north and cast its light through the other window against the wall behind me.

There is nothing amazing about this, just the passing of time and sun's annual progression northward in the sky until the Summer Solstice when it pauses and begins its southward journey. Its just the ticking of the cosmic clock.

But it reminds me, like the lilac bushes beginning to bloom in the backyard, that life surrounds us and time passes. It is at a time like this that I stop and savor the spring sunrise and the bursting purple lilac buds. I shut out the racket of daily life and drink in the moment.
For an instant, I am connected to the great sea of existence that we all swim in and I sense the eternal.

the American experience

The Moussaoui case is of short-term importance. In fifty years, it will be a short paragraph in history and in one hundred years a footnote.

Today, 9/11 is a searing pain in the lives of the families and friends of the people who perished that day. For those of us who watched it unfold, live on television, it will remain a haunted day that we will recall in detail for the rest of ours lives, "What were you doing on 9/11." If you're a boomer you will have a cache of such days, JFK, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, and the Challenger Explosion. If you are older, you will have even more such days.

These are the times of our shared collective American consciousness: experiences that shape who we are and how we act today.

However, 9/11 was almost five years ago and there is a new generation that has had no direct experience with any of those events. They are building their own memory albums. These new citizens will have a different American consciousness, shaped by the experiences we create for them.

Moussaoui

The verdict to put Moussaoui in jail for the rest of his life was exactly the right decision.

Putting Moussaoui to death turns him into a martyr and reinforces the jihad world view of the United States as a place without law. Prison shows restraint and takes us back one step from the eye-for-an-eye vendetta politics that we are currently playing.

Killing Moussaoui will not heal anyone suffering loss. Some of the family and friends of the murdered sincerely feel that Moussaoui's death will somehow close this chapter in their lives.Had he been executed, they would have discovered that there would still be a void in their lives and that Moussaoui's death would have been disappointingly unfulfilling.

Putting Moussaoui behind bars shows that we are now ready to move on. That the 9/11 fever that gripped this country has started to cool and we are now beginning to think rationally and humanely about how we deal with terrorists and jihadists.

Putting Moussaoui in jail also puts into perspective the correct method that the United States and the World should use to deal with these extremists: as a legal matter involving law enforcementand the courts. Terrorism is political anarchy which we have a long tradition of dealing with through our courts and police. In extreme cases, such as the Taliban in Afghanistan, the military was needed to confront a nation that housed terrorists. But on the whole, the military should not be our first response to terrorist threats.

We are not in a World War against terror. We are not Israel and we shouldn't apply their world view to our experience. That is what our President and his administration has done. Our war on Iraq is an excellent example if how wrong the war concept can go.

Lastly, by jailing Moussaoui rather than killing him, we open the door just a little to more reasonable behavior towards our friends and enemies. Not all who fight us are religious fanactics. Many fight because they see no other alternative for changing their own culture's condition of decay. We now have the opportunity to re-evaluate our approach to the issues that cause many people to turn to violence against us.

If we step back and look at terrorism as a legal matter and not cultural war, we have much greater freedom in dealing with our adversaries and looking for solutions.

In the end, the Moussaoui verdict is a little thing, just one of a thousand events competing for our attention and exerting its butterfly pressure on the course of history.

Take a moment to enjoy the sun rise and the cosmic pulse.

posted by Les @ 6:56 AM