April 18, 2006

Shed No Tears For Terrorists

Get out your box of aloe vera-enriched, three-ply Kleenex tissues. The bleeding-heart defense team for convicted al Qaeda terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui wants to tell you a sob story. Like so many apologists for jihad, Moussaoui's lawyers are playing the victim card on behalf of a murder-minded thug who just can't wait to die for Allah.

Last April, Moussaoui pleaded guilty to six charges of conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism, conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy, conspiracy to destroy aircraft, conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction, conspiracy to murder government employees and conspiracy to destroy property.

Throughout the sentencing phase of his trial, this martyr-in-waiting has laughed at his victims, brandished his Koran and shouted death threats to America—"God Curse You All!" and "Burn in hell!" and, of course, "Allah Akbar!"

Last week, when prosecutors put 9/11 family members on the stand to tell the world the pain and horror they still feel every day as a result of the mass murders that Moussaoui facilitated, presiding Judge Leonie Brinkema warned them against "prejudicial testimony."

But Judge Brinkema said nary a word as Moussaoui's lawyers ratcheted up the prejudicial emote-a-meter to 11.

A social worker and a psychologist offered pathos-laden testimony about Moussaoui's difficult childhood. His abusive father. The anti-Muslim taunts of schoolmates. The hostility of the parents of his French girlfriend, under whom Moussaoui "suffered a lot of pain about not being accepted."

The courtroom soap opera climaxed with video testimony exhibiting his troubled sisters, who called their beloved Zacarias the "little sweetheart of the family." Sniffle.

According to The New York Times, which headlined its story "Moussaoui's Childhood Is Presented as Mitigating Factor," Dr. Xavier Amador told the jury Monday that Little Orphan Moussaoui "suffered from schizophrenia of the paranoid variety."

Let me throw away the medical dictionary and give my diagnosis of the defense team's diagnosis:

Bull.

Moussaoui doesn't sound like a psych ward patient when he rants about the "Jewish state of Palestine" and threatens to "exterminate" American Jews in the Koran-ordained quest to spread Islam and supplant America as the world's superpower. This is standard-issue rhetoric for countless so-called "moderate" Muslim imams and madrassa operators and supposedly Westernized, educated emirs and Iranian government officials and Arab government-owned newspapers.

Totally sick, but completely sane.

Moussaoui rightly mocked his own defense team. "It's a lot of American B.S.," he scoffed. I told you he wasn't nuts.

Playing the mental illness card allows the blind to continue deluding themselves about what University of London, King's College, professor Efraim Karsh calls Islamic imperialism. Jihadists didn't start claiming war on non-believers in 2001 or 1993 or 1948. They have aspired to conquer for ages. These historical claims are "frequently dismissed by Westerners as delusional, a species of mere self-aggrandizement or propaganda," Karsh writes in his new book. "But the Islamists are perfectly serious, and know what they are doing. Their rhetoric has a millennial warrant, both in doctrine and in fact, and taps into a deep undercurrent that has characterized the political culture of Islam from the beginning."

Yet, the bleeding hearts foolishly and suicidally persist with their Poor Little Jihadist propaganda and call for sympathy and understanding for the Root Causes that fueled the 9/11 hijackers, Moussaoui, convicted Islamic shoebomber Richard Reid, the Muslim gunman who murdered two people at Los Angeles International Airport's El Al ticket counter in 2002, and the Koran-invoking Tar Heel terrorist who rammed his SUV into a busy student square at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. And on and on.

On Monday, while Moussaoui's defense team played their violins in court, apologists across Europe and the Muslim world played the same song for the suicide bomber who murdered nine innocent civilians and wounded scores more at a Tel Aviv restaurant.

The bomber packed his explosives with nails and shrapnel soaked in rat poison to increase the suffering of the victims.

Police had to pick bits of flesh off the blood-drenched streets and parked car windshields.

But it's not the fault of terrorist Sami Salim Mohammed Hammed and his sponsors at Islamic Jihad. Blame "Israeli aggression" and "anti-Arab racism"!

The dry-eyed know there is one Root Cause for this carnage. It's not America, Israel, racism or psychological imbalances.

It's evil. Just evil.

Michelle Malkin [email her] is author of Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores. Click here for Peter Brimelow’s review. Click here for Michelle Malkin's website. Michelle Malkin's latest book is "Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild."