>Very few people are thinking about this, whether it's the cretins in
>the administration who can do little more than order bombing runs, or
>the folks on the left who exhume ancient and largely irrelevant
>slogans, relics from anti-intervention struggles, apparently not
>noticing that we were attacked, which changes everything. And the
>partisans of the cops-and-courts approach, among whom I number
>myself, apparently haven't thought through just how you go about
>"bringing them to justice" - when the them in question could be
>thousands of heavily armed, well-hidden fanatics who will fight to
>the death.
Why does the fact that we have been attacked "change everything?" It's not like we haven't been attacked before. What about the embassy bombings a couple of years back? What about the USS Cole attack? What about the marines who were killed in Beirut? The only difference between these events and the 9/11 attack is the scale of the atrocity.
As with all the other attacks, this one should be handled the same way. Those who were behind the attack should be found and punished. But only the guilty parties should be punished, and it should be demonstrated to everyone that they are in fact guilty before being punished.
So, this means no military offensive against Afghanistan or any other country, since the killing of innocents can not be justified, and is in fact just another act of terrorism.
Since the terrorists live in other countries, we need to enlist the help of those other countries in rounding up the terrorists. This means a coordinated international investigation.
Those states that will not assist in this effort should be castigated for their intransigence. Certainly it would be easy enough to stop selling weapons and military hardware to such states. The evidence that we've obtained against suspected terrorists hiding in countries which refuse to cooperate should be made public, to put international pressure on them to cooperate.
This kind of stuff usually works. The problem is, the US never wants to negotiate these things. It WANTS to use force, since it knows it has overwhelming superiority in a military conflict. That's why Iraqi proposals for a conditional withdrawal from Kuwait were rebuffed. That's why compromise was not permitted during discussions at Ramboullet (sp?). The Taliban initially offered to send bin Laden to a neutral country if they were shown the evidence against him. More recently, the Taliban repeated the offer, dropping their insistence on seeing any evidence. Why not take them up on their offer?
What if it doesn't work? What if you put pressure on a regime to help prosecute a terrorist, short of military intervention, and they still refuse to help? They you are stuck. Unless there is enough international outrage to get UN support for UN-led military action against any such "rougue" nation, you should let the suspected terrorists have their safe haven for the time being. You then rely on changing your policies in the region to generate goodwill towards yourself, minimizing the anger and hatred that leads to terrorist recruits. You support genuinely democratic opposition to the autocratic regimes of the region. And wait for a change of policy in the government you want to persuade.
This "let them be" stance is what most people seem to find unacceptable. But the alternatives are even more unacceptable.
>And, yes, a long-term "solution" requires the U.S. transform its
>Middle East policies dramatically - which is a polite way of
>describing a substantial retreat from its empire.
Personally, I don't see any other solution. As Robert Fisk says, you simply can't stop a determined suicide bomber. It is impossible. The only way to stop that sort of attack is to defuse the situation that creates that kind of desperation and hatred.
>Absolutely right and just, but that's serious stuff, and I don't think a
lot of
>lefties urging that have thought through just how profound and
>difficult a struggle that will be.
What's so serious about it? Isn't this merely the same thing left leaning folks have been pursuing for years? We've ALWAYS had a profoundly difficult time getting what we want. This is no different. Why this is supposed to be a special case is beyond me.
Brett