>>Could there have been a non-violent alternative to the war?
>>Theoretically, yes, but practically, no, as the U.S. government's aim
>>was not to put the perpetrators (the most responsible of whom died in
>>the bombings anyhow) on trial but to reassert its military might
>>(restoring confidence in its competence which was shaken by the
>>Pentagon bombing), reaffirm its political leadership, expand its
>>sphere of influence (e.g., more US military bases in the Middle East
>>& Central Asia), and install a more useful regime than the present
>>one in Afghanistan. Yoshie
>
>There is insufficient reason to assume this is true,
>and scant evidence.
The Bush regime didn't pursue the legal course of action that Justin, among others, laid out:
At 3:31 AM +0000 10/10/01, Justin Schwartz wrote:
>I do not support war, but there is a fairly well-established
>protolocal for a criminal investigation. You gather evidence,
>identify suspects with probable cause, find 'em, and bust 'em. In
>this case there is the added problem that they are (apparently)
>under the protection of a hostile nation. By "apparently," I meand
>if it's OBL. The Guardian and Le Monde think there's pretty decent
>evidence; it's summarized in the current edition of the Guardian
>Weekly. A lot of it had to do with chasing the money. Assume it's
>him and his lot. The Taliban was, at least before we started
>bombing, at least hypothetically open to listening to the evidence.
Etc.
A peaceful solution was open to the Bush regime, but it refused to use it. One is then led to believe that the regime was less interested in criminal justice than war.
Yoshie