To the editor:

Why will we kill Mr. Moussaoui? Set aside deterrence. Will killing him, and threatening death, deter others from committing suicidal acts of terror? A threat of death to deter suicide is a conclusion both doubtful and illogical. Punishing a failed suicide with a death sentence makes no more sense.

So why kill him? Vengeance is all we have left. He is impious, and he offends us. We will kill him for impiety. If he had not missed the party, he’d have done the job for us and been on one of those airplanes. But he missed his plane, we caught him and now he offends us. He offends our sensibilities, he mocks us and the victims of 9-11, saying they were too few and more of us need to die. And so offended by him, we will kill him. We most surely will kill him.

Not much of a difference really from the fear about the Allah “stick figures.” We don’t publish drawings of Allah. Why? It offends people who have killed and who threaten more killing when they are offended. The Comedy Channel recently censored South Park from cartooning Allah, afraid, it seems, of a claim of impiety, of offending religious sensibilities.

There is no small measure of real or threatened death in either case.

William Skepnek,

Lawrence