Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted of being involved in the 9/11 plot and sentenced to life in prison five days ago. During his trial he frequently spoke out of turn, saying things about how America is evil and he is going to be a martyr and so on. He even plead guilty. Now he wants to change his plea (requires a free membership). He claims that, "he had not trusted the American legal system because he was not assigned a Muslim lawyer, and that his days in solitary confinement had provoked him to fight that system." Furthermore, he claims that "the jurors' decision to spare his life made him look at his situation anew," and now "he would welcome a trial where he could show he was not part of the 9/11 plot" in his own words: "'because I now see that it is possible that I can receive a fair trial even with Americans as jurors.'" I wasn't aware that it was even possible to change your plea after sentencing. In fact, its not. His lawyers, in their filing of his request, "acknowledged that the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prohibit a defendant from withdrawing a guilty plea after he is sentenced" but submitted the request anyway, due to "'their problematic relationship with Moussaoui'" who "confounded" his lawyers with his outbursts and general bizarre behavior during the original trial.
What is interesting to me is that throughout his trial he antagonized the judge and jury claiming that he wanted to be a martyr. The government strongly urged the jurors to give him the death sentence, but instead they gave him life in prison. And now he wants to change his plea. Not when he was faced with death. Although he may be telling the truth and have a newfound faith in the American system, I am skeptical. My belief, or at least a theory that seems plausible to me, is this: he wanted to die. He antagonized the court in order to provoke them so they would hate him and give him the death penalty. Now that they haven't he is faced with decades in isolation in a maximum security prison. He wanted to fly planes into buildings to die as a martyr. When that didn't work he wanted to die at the hands of "infidels" so he could still be a martyr. When instead he was sentenced to life imprisonment, with no more chances at martyrdom, he tried to escape. He doesn't want another trial because he wants to be innocent, he wants another trial so he can get another shot at martyrdom.
I don't think that this conclusion seems remarkable to many, including those involved in his trial. I'm sure he won't get another trial since it is illegal for him to change his plea at this point. But it should make us consider our approach to people like him and the culture he comes from. Our culture values life above almost anything. That is reflected by the fact that Western soldiers from many countries often are taken prisoner in wars and do not fight to the death. We were confounded by the Japanese willingness to die for their country in World War II. This enemy is very similar. An "honorable" death is better than life. These men do not want to kill for their cause, they want to die for it. This makes confronting this threat much more complicated. Military power will not deter them. As the Soviets learned in Afghanistan, it doesn't matter how many you kill, they will not give up. We cannot simply overpower them unless we are going to kill every last one of them. There can be no surrender obtained through military action. We have to win men away from this cause while they are alive. We have to change minds and hearts. I'm not saying that military action should always be out of the question -- it may be that we have to prove that we are strong and willing to fight back before they will respect us at all. But we also have to understand that military action alone will not win this war and we need to have a plan in which military action is just one tactic, not our entire strategy.
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"...military action alone will not win this war."
Which war?
the "Global War on Terror" in general. But also the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But mostly the global war against militant Islamic radicals, which may not be a "war" in the classical sense, but is commonly and probably correctly seen as one. It is a war in that they seek to destroy many of our ideals and we don't want to let them. Wars take many forms, and armed conflict is just one of them. The Cold War was certainly a war, and this is too.
Are you and I fighting it?
As much as the common US citizen was fighting the cold war.
So what should we do?
Obviously there is no quick or easy solution, and I'm not about to claim that I have it figured out. It is a very complicated situation. However, there are a few things that we can all do that will probably help. We ought to all recognize that there is a conflict -- admit that there are those in the world that want to kill us because of our political and social ideals. Then we need to keep this in mind when we are electing leaders. We need to find leaders who will take this conflict seriously. And, as I've said in my post, we need to encourage our leaders to have a plan that is broader than military action, a plan that takes into account the full reality of the situation and doesn't pretend that we are dealing with people we are not. Finally, when our leaders do have this in mind and have made a plan that we can endorse we should do so, trust them, and create some national and hopefully international unity on the issue.
I'm not sure what the best way to fight this war is. But I know that conquering with military might will not stop the conflict -- at best it will cause it to hibernate for another few decades. We need to do something to convince the people we are in conflict with now to accept those with different beliefs than their own and to learn to live in peace with those they disagree with. We also need to convince them (and maybe ourselves) of the importance of upholding basic human rights, as well as the universal benefits of representative government. We don't need to set them up for failure or allow "benevolent dictators" to take over. And we don't need to crush them into submission with military might, because this will just breed contempt and reactions is future generations (as in Palestine)
The Moussaoui case calls attention to the burden on the average American public citizen sitting on a jury -- asked to make important, difficult decisions with very little guidance. On what do they base their decision, besides gut feelings and emotion -- both subject to manipulation by courtroom theatrics?
Ongoing forensic research asks the general public to help shape criminal sentencing standards. At www.depravityscale.org, the public can have a direct voice in the development of community-based standards to aid juries -- to replace arbitrariness with evidence-based, objective fairness.
The survey asks participants to rank intents, actions, and attitudes of crimes against eachother, to identify what society feels constitutes "the worst of the worst" -- thus warranting more severe punishments.
Participation takes approximately 10 minutes. Questions? Email questions@depravityscale.org
www.depravityscale.org
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