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Re: war...

> lest the posts start up about the perils and intrinsic evils of war before i
> get my $.02 in:

And so it begins...

Naw, I'm not going to get in a big argument here.  I don't really 
disagree with what you said; I just want to respond tangentially
to a couple of points.  

> 3. the taliban has been beseeched & warned re: the wtc attacks, not only by 
> the u.s. but by just about every other civilized nation -- handing over one man
> (who if i am correct, is not even the official head of the taliban) 

He's got no official connection to the Taliban at all.  He's an exiled 
Saudi Arabian.  See http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO109C.html

> could
> have kept the bombs on the north american continent.  if they cared about the
> afghani people at all, they would have handed over osama weeks ago.

Two small [added later: hmmm.... they didn't stay small] comments: first of
all, they said they were willing to hand him over, if the US would provide
proof of their accusations.  We refused to provide any proof, and just insisted
he be handed over.  They then offered to hand him over to a neutral Muslim
country where they thought he might get a fair trial.  We rejected that offer,
too.  Second comment is that under Islamic law, there are obligations to
protect guests that you have granted sanctuary.  Let's put it this way: how
would you feel if you had a house guest, and a vigilante lynch mob showed up
outside with a lot of really big guns, and demanded you turn over your guest,
because they believed he was a murderer.  What would you do?  Throw religion
and bigotry into the mix (let's say your house guest was black and the mob
outside had connections to the KKK), and you have a very complex situation.  A
national convention of their clerics asked bin Laden to leave voluntarily.
Even if the Taliban did care about the Afghani people (which, maybe by their
own twisted rules they probably think they do), I'm not sure I would agree that
it would be the best thing to sacrifice the one to save the many.  Maybe if
that one agreed to do so, that would be one thing, but isn't it rather craven
to throw out a guest to protect yourself?  (See the Genesis chapter on Sodom as
well as Judges 19.)  I'm not being rhetorical here, I'm just thinking out loud.

Now, lest it seem that I am defending the Taliban, I've thought they were evil
for a long time now.  Their oppression of women has been appalling from the day
they took over, and remember when they destroyed that museum of buddhist icons?
What bothers me is that we are arrogantly insisting on pursuing vigilante
justice rather than due process of law, that we are insisting other government
do what we say without question or dialogue, and that we are telling people to
disagree with us "at your peril".  This is not the America of freedom and
respect for all persons that I want to be a part of.  Heck, *I'd* like to see
this proof that Tony Blair found so convincing.  The leader of Pakistan (heck,
just about all the world leaders) have urged the US to show their evidence.  I
don't understand why we don't.  It makes us look like we don't have any.
During the Cuban Missle Crisis, it was the revelation of proof in the UN that
the Soviets were lying about the missles in Cuba that turned the diplomatic
situation around and got the world on our side.  Why aren't we doing that here?
Why don't we respect the UN and world court unless it suits our purposes to do
so (when the world court convicted the US of pursuing a terrorist war in
Nicaragua, Reagan disdained the verdict and said, in essence, that since we had
the power, nobody could tell us what to do.  Those aren't the ethics of law
that *I* believe in.)?  In this case, it sounds like we could get a conviction
in the world court standing on our heads.  Why don't we do so?[*] Why don't we
start behaving like a *member* of the world community, rather than like the
*master* of the world community.  What I would have liked to have see happen is
the US go with its grievances and evidence before the World Court, build a
consensus-based strategy to rid the world of terrorism and the economic forces
that support terrorism, and then put the resources of our military and economic
might into realizing that plan.  Instead we get "do it our way or we'll bomb
you, too".

[*] lest someone point it out, it seems obvious to me that the answer is
because then we would have to recognize the world's authority over us and own
up to our own support of terrorists and oppressive governments around the
world.  And maybe we would have to start paying our UN dues, too.  And change
our approach to Israel.

Whoops, I'm late for a meeting,
-- 
Don Smith                    Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                          http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"I feel terrible sadness when I hear "Let's get back to 'normal'".
In other words, we have nothing to learn or change."  - Sylvia Aruffo
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