> Much as I'd like to sympathize with the above -particularly the last
> sentence- we have no way of knowing just what justice would consist of
> under the current circumstances.
>
> Suppose the US state was able to present evidence "beyond a shadow of
> a doubt" that ObL and his networks "masterminded" the deed. With
> minimal loss of life we capture them and bring them before an
> international criminal court, whose mandate is sufficiently impartial
> that it can be used against a Kissinger and Pinochet etc. ObL is
> tried, found guilty and then what? Who has the authority to determine
> whether he lives or dies? Who? And would we be able to say justice was
> achieved?
.
Well, a crime is a crime. If you saw a lynch mob brutally attack some
hapless undesirable in your neighborhood, what would you want to see happen?
You would want the police to find the perps, arrest them, convict them, and
put them away, right?
What if the police did nothing? You would feel something was amiss, wouldn't you? Even though you knew that jailing the guilty wouldn't solve all the problems of human subjectivity and alienation that led to the crime. Even though you know that cops and courts are imperfect, often ugly institutions. Even though no one could say with divine certainty that justice had been done.
Most people in America have witnessed an awful crime and want something done. That's perfectly natural, but it's also dangerous, since their leaders are always willing to grab a pretext for doing awful things of their own. That's the point of thinking about what the right response to Sept 11 is. It's to figure out what can be done to satisfy people's natural desire for justice while forestalling something even more horrible from taking place.
Seth