Why Mir Aimal Kansi Still Matters

Yes, like Humberto Leal, Mir Kansi is still dead, executed by the State of Virginia in 2002, after his conviction of the premeditated murder of two CIA employees, their stopped vehicles awaited a traffic light change to turn into the Agency Hq. on the morning of January 25, 1993.

Unlike Humberto, however, Mir lives on in the hearts and minds of the radical Islamic jihadists. An honored martyr of the jihadist terror war against western civilization, Kansi now rests peaceably, buried with full governmental honors in his home town, Bolachistan, Pakistan, where a newly built Mosque bears his name and a plaque tells of his heroic and courageous act of shouting unarmed, defenseless commuters sitting in their cars.

Mir Kansi went to his death, proud of his killings of two males, while grievously wounding three other male CIA employees. He also congratulated himself for passing up the opportunity to shoot numerous female vehicle occupants because to have done so would not have been consistent with his religion's teachings.

Now, I am an avowed supporter of the death penalty, believing it to be a just and necessary exercise of the government's police powers. It deters potential killers contemplating a violent crime generally, while deterring absolutely the convicted murderer, who is thereby no longer a danger to kill other prison employees or his/her fellow prison inmates. In wartime, however, the punishment does not fit the "non-crime." Mr.Mir Kansi ended his short, brutish and nasty tenure on earth with a serene smile on his face, secure in the belief that his sexist carnage in Langley, Virginia guaranteed him a large bevy of beauties, untainted by prior carnal knowledge, for eternity. Indisputably, giving Mir his deeply desired martyr status is not a deterrent to others of his deranged ilk - 70 virgins forever in heaven is just too damn appealing to many men of the devastating unpleasant lands of the Middle East. In war, the primary responsibility of the government is definitely not to punish enemy combatants, legal or illegal, having committed war crimes or not. Our government's pre-eminent obligation is to defeat the enemy, thereby winning the war - to save the nation from death and destruction.

The means of winning this war against Islamist jihadists is two-fold. First, we need to stop terrorists attacks before more innocents, men and women, are murdered, while seeking innovative ways to destroy the will of potential new Islamic recruits from joining the fray. In implementing such a war winning strategy, the U.S. government should have put Kansi, as a lawful prisoner of war, being lawfully detained for the duration of the armed conflict, in a women's prison where his daily duty entailed bathroom cleaning, clothes washing and other submissive functions that would make him absolutely subservient to the whims and caprice of the other inmates for the next fifty or sixty years. As we all know, war is hell. So, Mir should have had to clean female unmentionables for his miserable life, instead of getting a Mosque and hero funeral. After 911, Americans were told to think "outside the box" in defending the country from Islamic terrorists. Yet, in 2002,we dealt with Kansi as if he were a street criminal. Not a winning strategy for preventing future Mir's, so that why he still matters.