a parable on the seeds of war

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Sun Oct 7 14:17:32 PDT 2001


kelley wrote:
>
> <forward>
> The point of this is NOT to say that the West is somehow responsible
> for terrorism. Obviously, the terrorists are responsible, and they
> must be brought to justice.

The U.S. bombing of Afghanistan officially confirms that the 9/11 attacks were acts of war, not individual crimes. Individual crimes are simply not met by attacking a nation.

Hence there is no longer any basis for "bringing them to justice," any more than there was any basis to bring to justice the members of the German, British, and U.S. air forces after WW2 or the U.S. Air Force after the bombings of Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Panama, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, and Serbia. All those bombing campaigns were directed primarily against civilian tartgets.

If they are captured and tried, it must be as war criminals, and not as terrorists, and the distinction between them and the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam has to be demonstrated by appeal to recognized standards of international law applying to belligerents, not to criminal law of any nation.

Carrol



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