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[Medical Illustration <druid AT email.unc.edu>]

Not to sound paranoid & mean, but I have two problems with that

1.  Life imprisonment seems too kind a sentence to me.  This is a man who
probably feels that he was acting for a righteous cause, and succeeded in
his goal.  Therefore he has that to strengthen him throughout whatever
hardships he encounters in prison.  And if you truly want change, hardship
is often the only way to change someone's mind.
2.  What if he were to ever get out?  What if a terrorist decided to kidnap
a high ranking official, or highjack a plane, in order to get the said
person back?  Then they have a live hero to praise, who has been successful
at least once.  

Also, to think that prison doesn't have a similar effect to killing them as
far as creating a martyr, does not seem logical to me.  The person still
managed to successfully complete their mission.  Now they are being punished
by the big evil power.  And to top it off, they're alive.  What a hero!

Though I won't argue about the effectiveness of the death penalty (which I
don't think can ever truly be measured- no matter how masterful you are with
statistics & psychology) I would argue that if we start killing these
people, there will be some effectiveness.  These people, though they are
evil, are fairly unique.  They are singularly strong, charismatic, and rich
leaders.  That is part of the reason that they keep succeeding in their
goals, against whatever odds, with limited resources.  Kill enough of them
before they can breed, and take advantage of natural selection.

Drew
On 9/13/01 4:22 PM, "Thomas Beckett" <thomas AT tbeckett.com> wrote:

> Medical Illustration wrote:
>> However, what exactly does anyone see as a good, non violent reaction to
>> this?  Someone earlier mentioned capturing & imprisoning the responsible
>> parties, but I don't see that as a possibility without extreme violence
>> coming to both sides...  So what exactly would a non violent solution look
>> like in this case?
> 
> Well, it worked with the embassy bombing suspects.  One of the main
> defendants was captured in Pakistan and extracted to the U.S.  Now he's
> in prison for life.
> 
> TaB
> 
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