Hi Doug,
First off, nothing is better than bombing a poor country and slaughtering more innocents, so a first cut is that nothing is indeed a preferable answer to actual US policy, even if it isn't ideal.
As for what we are supposed to do, I repeat that the real battle is over the attitudes of the Arab Muslim population. You simply can't defeat the terrorists as long as there are such virulent feelings against the US among the arab population. New terrorists will spring up to replace destroyed cells, and it will be impossible to stop attacks if terrorists continue to employ suicide bombers.
So, you have to convince the arab world that we are not imperialist overlords, and that we can co-exist on good terms without malice. This means changing our policies - an end to the support of Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, and end to the embargo against Iraq, withdrawl of our support for the ruling elites of the Gulf states, etc. And it means working through the UN instead of acting unilaterally when crises do occur, and respecting international law.
That's the long term solution - what about the short term? We should investigate the 9/11 attacks as aggressively as possibe to bring any terrorist involved to justice. The ones we can catch in the US or in sympathetic countries abroad which will extradite them to the US or try them in their countries we can punish immediately.
As for what to do about ObL, we can start by showing restraint - not escalating the violence and refusing to take any innocent lives ourselves. This squanders whatever moral high ground we might have enjoyed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. We should aim to try ObL in as neutral forum as possible (international court? maybe a country other than the US which lost some civilians in the WTC bombing?) in order to provide as fair a trial as possible and to enhance the credibility of any conviction. We should apply international diplomatic pressure to the Taliban - cut off its sources of funding and supply for military hardware, announcing that it is harboring an man suspected of orchestrating a horrendous international crime. We should organize humanitarian aid to Afghanistan through the UN to start building goodwill among the people and even with the Taliban. We should offer to send teams into Afghanistan to help rid the country of the mines that litter the country. We should provide the evidence the Taliban has asked for to see if this might persuade them to hand over bin Laden. The "there is nothing to negotiate" stand is outrageous.
If this still doesn't get the Taliban to hand over bin Laden, then there isn't much you can do. The only other option I see is trying to get UN support for a military search mission in Afghanistan for ObL. Some kind of special forces operation to go in and get him out, but I'm agnostic as to whether or not I'd support this kind of maverick mission. If there are more terrorist attacks in the meantime, you might argue for an international force to go in and eliminate the Taliban and set up some sort of UN force to keep the peace, but I still wouldn't act unilaterally even under those circumstances. Besides, if ObL and his ilk (I had to work that word in somehow!) continue to hide out and kill indiscriminantly in the face of a US response that is seen to be showing restraint, helping the poor, and trying only to pursue simple justice for the victims of terror, this will go a long way towards damping the anti-American sentiment that is currently so ubiquitous in the Persian Gulf these days.
Brett
>>C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>
>>That seems to me quite right. Consider where America's "humanitarian"
>>interventions have been centered in the Bush-Clinton-Bush era: since the
>>Gulf War, we've managed to kill perhaps twice the number that died in the
>>WTC in Somalia: establish a protectorate over southwest Europe; and
launch
>>a selfless crusade in Afghanistan to rid the world of terrorism. Three
>>points of a triangle containing what for almost a century successive US
>>governments have recognized as the world's greatest geopolitical prize,
>>Mideast oil. This war, like most of America's wars in the last fifty
years
>>is a demonstration war -- a warning to all of what happens if anyone
>>presumes to to disturb the American management of the world economy.
>
>So let me ask you the same question - what are we supposed to do? Nothing?
>
>Doug