Moussaoui Verdict: A Crack in the Cellar
Life in prison. "America, you lost. ... I won", his words as exiting the courtroom after the verdict had been reached. Some think the jury's decision against the death penalty prevented him from becoming a martyr. It may have, though some may argue death at the hands of western lawmakers, not in battle, would have achieved the same goal, but I'm sure his masters would have made an exception.
I fear however, that we may have done something far worse than making him a martyr, and that is a folk hero…a celebrity; a living icon for hatred, still capable of thinking, speaking, and touching.
At first, he will be sent to a Colorado supermax, where he will be cut off from the outside world and as U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said today, he'll "die with a whimper". But time changes all things. Even now, before they've turned down the bed in his cell, the French government is preparing a request to have him serve his sentence there.
As long as he is breathing, as long as he is alive, there is a chance -- as time puts the memory of 9/11 behind us, as our children grow up never knowing the World Trade Center, as history is re-written by apologists -- that he can claw closer to the living world.
It happens all the time with serial killers, as the distance from their horrors grow so softens the general opinion. And their aged faces make us think of our grandfathers, not murderers. Maybe 20 years from now, people will start wondering, "What did he do that was so bad? He wasn't on any of those planes?" "Hasn't he paid his debt?"
We've left a crack, seemingly microscopic now, but any fracture left unattended for several decades has the chance to facilitate a collapse. It is our duty to prevent this. We must remember the evil he embraces and pass it down. Even if time heals our personal wounds, we can never, should never, hide the scars that remain.