printAccording to the Associated Press, Moussaoui said that “it made his day to hear accounts of Americans suffering from the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and he would like to see similar attacks—every day.”
Family members of Sept. 11 victims exited the courtroom adamant Moussaoui should die, his callousness and cruelty having sealed his fate. Had he sniveled, sworn he had experienced an epiphany, or accepted the diagnosis of schizophrenia he was generously offered, victims may have looked upon him more favorably—as a victim too, perhaps (I can just hear the cliché, “We are all victims of this Islamic deadly ideology.”)
But Moussaoui stuck to his guns. Indeed, the Islamic terrorist is perfectly candid about why he kills, or schemes on killing. He doesn’t resort to the-camel-ate-my homework excuses, but tells it like he sees it. He kills us because he hates us.
The common criminals inhabiting Western jails, however, have made an art of using the therapeutic idiom, which they imbibe from their psychotherapist tutors, to work backwards and discover the exculpating “roots” of their behavior. Islamic criminals are different. They haven’t yet learned that “Daddy doesn’t love me” is a sufficient excuse for any crime committed in the West. They don’t need excuses—they are proud of their faith and the ghastly deeds they say it commands. These brutes exhibit not the slightest need to give their barbarism a palatable pedigree. It is Western intellectuals and pundits, not Arabs and Muslims, who developed the root-causes theories of terrorism. This is why Islamic criminals are so much more believable. When they tell us why they kill, we can take them at their word.
The evil Moussaoui also mocked Navy Lt. Nancy McKeown, who wept on the stand as she described the death of two of her subordinates. “I think it was disgusting for a military person to cry,” he snarled. “She is military; she should expect people at war with her to want to kill her.” The sounds of her sniffing meekly in front of him, he said, had made his day.
Here I have to agree with him. A representative of the military crying in front of her assailant exudes mush, not mettle. As I pointed out in “Osama’s Snickering at our Military,” OBL and his ascetic Islamists know full well that “the mentality that pervades the military, including the top brass,” is the “let-it-all-hang-out credo,” and that one is encouraged to parade emotions like one would a Purple Heart. Islamists despise us for it. More importantly, they don’t fear us because of it.
Frankly, I think that in front of the enemy, the military should suck it up.