The #1 Threat to Civilization

Presidential Commutations, Creative Commons, used with permission

President Biden’s announcement to commute the sentences of 37 out of 40 federal prisoners sitting on death row has been met with a range of responses.  On the one extreme there are those who are outraged at the decision, supporters of the death penalty who are bewildered by how the signature of an outgoing president can come along and upend the sum total of thousand of dollars and hours of legal prosecution of 37 felons that ended with legitimate court decisions that to take their lives in retribution for their grave, murderous crimes.

On the other hand, there are those who take umbrage with what they see as Biden’s “inconsistent” distinction between those whose sentence has been commuted to life without parole and the three whose death sentences will unfairly remain in place as they are. In Biden’s own words:

Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.

One of those three whose sentence was not commuted was Robert Bowers, 52, the man who opened fire one Shabbat Morning in 2018 killing eleven worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA.  A federal jury sentenced Mr. Bowers to death for what is considered the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. His death sentence was the first to be handed down during the Biden administration.  The other two prisoners who remain on death row are Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 31, convicted of helping to carry out the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three spectators and wounded hundreds more, and Dylann Roof, 30, who was convicted of the killing of nine Black parishioners in a racist attack on a Charleston church in 2015.

There are those who see this dichotomy as arbitrary.  After all, they protest, those who raped and murdered certainly had no love for their victims. Those are hate crimes too! In the words of one journalist,

In my opinion, President Biden makes perfect sense.

You see, there has always been crime – crimes of passion, malice, jealousy, greed.  As long as this planet is populated by human beings, I suspect that will be the case.  A death penalty rendered against such criminals, one might argue, is a punishment in the extreme, and serves no particular greater purpose.  It is not corrective for the perpetrator, and it does not bring back to life the victim.  And, these is no conclusive evidence one way or another whether or not it ultimately deters other individuals from carrying out similar crimes.  Although Biblical Jewish law calls for the death penalty in certain cases, it was to be prescribed only by judicial body of 23 expert judges and even then, only under certain extenuating circumstances.

However, one could suggest that the three perpetrators who will still remain on federal death row in the United States are manifestations of a ruthless malady that has crept into our daily lives and left us frustrated and confused, The crime of terror – the random destruction of innocent lives in an attempt to manipulate society and its leadership – has spread across the word and taken on many different forms. School shootings, house of worship rampages, and other similar offenses seek to destroy random lives in a calculated effort to engender fear and make irrational demands of leadership. In their wake, they often leave law enforcement baffled and society unprepared to deal with the root causes of these evils.

Criminals need to be punished, and in the best scenarios, rehabilitated. But terrorism is not just crime. Terrorism is a societal plague – a worldwide pandemic – whose perpetrators cannot be treated either as criminals nor as freedom fighters. Through their wanton actions of destruction they pave the way for more of the same.  In the words of former Prime Minister of Great Britain, Tony Blair, “The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.”

The purpose of terrorism lies not just in the violent act itself. It is in producing terror. It sets out to inflame, to divide, to produce consequences which they then use to justify further terror.

The war against terrorism is not like any other conventional war.  In the worldwide war against terrorism, there are no conventional armies to battle – only brain-washed idealists who do not value life – not their own lives and definitely not the lives of their victims. In fact, they glorify death and martyrdom in the extreme. In the words of American author, Walter Isaacson, “Terrorism is a horrible thing that is the great threat to civilization on our planet.”

Terrorism is a horrible thing that is the great threat to civilization on our planet.

I think President Biden knows this, and that is why he is refusing to commute their death sentences. He is not being inconsistent in the slightest. To commute their sentences would not be only an act of mercy – it would be an accommodation to terror. Those death sentences are the equivalent of drawing a line in sand. Those death penalties are not only punishments – they are societal statements –  they are an important part of uprooting this unrepentant evil from our midst.

The State of Israel does not have a death penalty – except for convicted Nazis.  In my opinion, it is time for Israel to reconsider that position.  The prescription of the death penalty against convicted Nazi war criminals was a clear-cut statement of zero tolerance for insidious nationalistic policies centered on the destruction of a people or a religion – an unrepentant evil that must be uprooted before it spreads. That same death penalty should be extended to convicted terrorists and in doing so draw the same line in the sand that President Biden has drawn in these last days in office.

Terrorists are not criminals; they are much worse. They are the cells that carry a virus for a malady that uses unbridled violence to achieve its ruthless objectives. They are the post-modern equivalent of a Nazi philosophy of superiority and intolerance that poses the greatest threat to our planet.