If he lives for forty more years on earth, it wouldn’t shorten his stay in Hell by forty years. But here on earth, we can appreciate his punishment in a way we cannot once he is dead.

There’s that “wholly human” part showing in bold, that is in line with the “vindictive atheist” position. But the unbolded sentence is definitely the Christian in you shining through.

I’d also point out that locking him up and throwing away the key is an insult to the other Islamists, far more than executing him. To the Islamists, executing Major Hasan proves his worth as a warrior.

That right there is a pig of a different hue. And that argument has merit apart from the Christian debate or the Capital Punishment debate. It’s a valid political and military psy-ops argument aside from arguments about eternity or Capital Punishment. And that argument in this case could be a winnable argument for you. I could be swayed to your side on the political and psy-ops facets, but not on the other facets you began with.

I’d also point out that locking him up and throwing away the key is an insult to the other Islamists, far more than executing him. To the Islamists, executing Major Hasan proves his worth as a warrior.

I don’t recall discussing the death penalty much on THE FIRST STREET JOURNAL, but readers of my old site will recall that I am opposed to capital punishment. Major Hasan could be sentenced to death if found guilty, and part of me would like to see that, just so we could see how the brave Islamist warrior shrinks from such a fate and appeals the sentence. But, in reality, the best sentence would be life in prison, deprived of all of his religious materials, with a crucifix hanging on his wall, forever out of his reach, and a promise to throw his body to the pigs when he finally dies. Let him languish, remembering every day as he urinates and defecates in his diaper¹ that while he may have killed fourteen people who were better than him, he is really a small and unimportant man creature, headed only for Hell.

You and I will likely always disagree on Capital Punishment, and I accept that you’re always going to be wrong in that matter. But you’re also wrong in the above quote. Once Nidal Hasan receives in him his Just Reward (that of going to Hell), he will always be without his evil Koran. He will be forever and a day in excruciating agony, that which has never been contemplated by even the most heinous of sadistically evil creatures. Ten thousand years after arriving in Hell, he will still be living in that extreme, excruciating torture. And it won’t be merely bodily torture. He will remember every aspect of his life on Earth and how he acted in direct opposition to The Almighty’s most Holy will.

Everything you want him to remember, every bad experience in prison you want him to have can be measured on the Richter Scale as a 1.0. What he will experience and remember in his tens of millions of years in Hell will be what you want him to remember and experience, but on a Richter Scale of 10.5. (And note the Richter Scale is a geometric expansion, not algebraic.)

What you as a wholly human Catholic Christian desire, and what the most vindictive of atheists desire, is one and the same: That the man who is the embodiment of evil live a very long time in some level of physical discomfort, fully remembering all of his evil deeds.

What staunch Christians who adamantly support Capital Punishment understand is rather simple and actually fits your desire: When a man (or woman) dies in his (or her) sin, that man (or woman) immediately finds himself (or herself) in Hell, where he (or she) is forever physically tortured beyond man’s capacity to torture, all the while knowing and understanding Absolute Truth and having his (or her) life of sin against The Almighty played in a neverending loop in his (or her) mind, further torturing him (or her) for eternity.

The greatest punishment Nidal Hasan could receive is that he is executed instantaneously and immediately, to begin his eternity (that’s a billion years factorial times a billion years factorial raised to an exponent of a billion factorial and then some) in Hell.