Last month, a gun thug with a thirst for adventure armed himself with an AK-47 assault rifle, sailed a light vessel 240 miles over open sea, and lead a group of armed pirates onto the merchant ship Maersk Alabama. Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse took a few shots at the ship's captain, Richard Phillips, broke into the ship's safe and stole $30,000, and then, together with his pirate buddies, held Captain Phillips hostage at machine-gun point in an enclosed lifeboat for several days. While acting as the pirate's negotiator for the Captain's ransom, he boasted about his previous pirate conquests.Allegedly.
This past Thursday, Muse, having apparently undergone a personality transplant under the advice of his lawyers, timidly told a Federal District Court Judge in Manhattan that he's not guilty of any crime.
Of course, in cases where the eyes of the world have been focused on a pirate capture and hostage rescue for several days, it would be convenient if somebody is shown to be guilty of something, and if it's not Muse, then it must be--you guessed it--the U.S. government, the same folks who put up the money for the humanitarian food cargo being taken to Africa by an American crew under an American flag when Muse and his gang assaulted them.
Muse's lawyers stepped right up to the plate in typical blame-America-first fashion:
While in court, his lawyers also argued that since being in custody, Muse has been treated unfairly: He was allowed only one one-minute phone call to his mother back in Somalia, with whom he wanted to discuss his injured hand, and he's being kept practically in solitary confinement — even when he's around people, he can't talk to them, they said, because (unsurprisingly) there's a dearth of Somali translators in prison.
"He’s confused. He’s terrified,” one of the lawyers, Deirdre von Dornum, said. “As you can imagine, he’s a boy who fishes, and now he’s ended up in solitary confinement here.” She added, “He’s having a very difficult time.”
It really hurts when somebody takes away your AK-47 and sends you to sit in the corner, with just your Koran and your 3 square meals of ethnically sensitive food for company. Especially when you're just a kid and you want to go out and play.
Somebody in Somalia probably knows how old Muse is, more or less. His lawyers tried to palm him off as 14 or 16 (which the Court didn't buy), and he himself has tried out a number of ages, including 18 and 26, but, whatever the truth, attempting to pass Muse off as a child who fell in with the wrong crowd and suddenly found himself climbing up the hull of a ship in search of cash and captives doesn't wash. Whatever the cultural rules of Somalia, all children, everywhere, are quite familiar with the one rule that's kept humans alive since before Homo sapiens left his first footprint in the sand: Don't mess around with the Big Guy. If you do, you might get hurt.
Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse picked on the wrong guy and he got caught. If he had to get caught, he's lucky he got caught and is being held by Americans.
Muse's legal team obviously have what they consider to be empathy for him. In Barack Obama's copy of Cliff Notes on the Constitution, empathy in the legal profession is a good thing. If Muse's lawyers do a good job, maybe they'll end up District Court judges some day. All judges of the District Court are appointed by a president under the advice and consent of the Senate.
I wonder, though, if Muse's lawyers really do share his feelings. It is not hard to imagine that they legitimately share in the prisoner Muse's pain and confusion at finding himself isolated in a place that feels stranger and (perhaps) more perilous than the life of a pirate. Do they also have contact with the exhilaration of the pirate Muse as he captured and forced terrified people into isolation in a strange and dangerous place?
It is because fathoming such considerations of the human mind and spirit are too complex to be adequately answered by any mortal that human beings over many millennia have evolved laws developed as a result of inputs from a vast number of consciousnesses, cultures, and points in history. Among these laws, those that govern mariners traveling the perilous seas are among the most ancient and agreed upon.
Muse's case is just one example of the reason why, in our culture, Justice traditionally has been required to reach decisions informed by law and not by the pull of the heartstrings. Empathy means luck for the ones the judge "feels for," and politics keeps judges well informed on who they should be feeling for. That's bias, not justice.
__________Somebody in Somalia probably knows how old Muse is, more or less. His lawyers tried to palm him off as 14 or 16 (which the Court didn't buy), and he himself has tried out a number of ages, including 18 and 26, but, whatever the truth, attempting to pass Muse off as a child who fell in with the wrong crowd and suddenly found himself climbing up the hull of a ship in search of cash and captives doesn't wash. Whatever the cultural rules of Somalia, all children, everywhere, are quite familiar with the one rule that's kept humans alive since before Homo sapiens left his first footprint in the sand: Don't mess around with the Big Guy. If you do, you might get hurt.
Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse picked on the wrong guy and he got caught. If he had to get caught, he's lucky he got caught and is being held by Americans.
Muse's legal team obviously have what they consider to be empathy for him. In Barack Obama's copy of Cliff Notes on the Constitution, empathy in the legal profession is a good thing. If Muse's lawyers do a good job, maybe they'll end up District Court judges some day. All judges of the District Court are appointed by a president under the advice and consent of the Senate.
I wonder, though, if Muse's lawyers really do share his feelings. It is not hard to imagine that they legitimately share in the prisoner Muse's pain and confusion at finding himself isolated in a place that feels stranger and (perhaps) more perilous than the life of a pirate. Do they also have contact with the exhilaration of the pirate Muse as he captured and forced terrified people into isolation in a strange and dangerous place?
It is because fathoming such considerations of the human mind and spirit are too complex to be adequately answered by any mortal that human beings over many millennia have evolved laws developed as a result of inputs from a vast number of consciousnesses, cultures, and points in history. Among these laws, those that govern mariners traveling the perilous seas are among the most ancient and agreed upon.
Muse's case is just one example of the reason why, in our culture, Justice traditionally has been required to reach decisions informed by law and not by the pull of the heartstrings. Empathy means luck for the ones the judge "feels for," and politics keeps judges well informed on who they should be feeling for. That's bias, not justice.
Related posts:
Thank You, American Heroes
Hillary Clinton on Islamic Pirates
Thomas Jefferson on Islamic Pirates
Somali Pirates Do Their Bit to "Shape the World"
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