The Newshour reported tonight that Moussaui will get put in a cell 65 feet below ground, with the guards only saying "utilitarian" things to him, while he unravels, as people do in solitary for life -- especially those who are already mentally ill. (See this Human Rights Watch report for details.) Nobody claimed he was going to be an especially violent or dangerous prisoner. The sense was: this is what he deserves.
When I was about 12, I went to Ogden, Utah, to a rocket science workshop, and heard a guy who dropped bombs on Japan talk about being captured and roughed up. Someone in audience asked if he would go back. He said, "I'd go tomorrow." He got a standing ovation for that, minus one, me. I sat out the ovation, and I want to sit out "Bury him deep in a hole."
What used to separate the country of John Adams, of Thoreau, of William James, of E.B. White, of Hannah Arendt, from the Nazi thugdom of Germany in the thirties was that we didn't put people in holes and wait for them to fall apart, ever, no matter what. Ever, no matter what.
The commonplace mind of my country frightens and shames me.