> Likewise, any other people who fit the terms as defined earlier with
> sufficient evidence supporting the case against them should be offered
> up for trial. Should the first step have been fairly and equally carried
> out that this list would include Sharon, Albright, Clinton, Bush and
> Busher, Kissinger, and other westerners.
You couldn't stop there. You'd have to round up every Second World thug, every Third World dictator, every authoritarian general, every corrupt police chief on the planet. This is the Enlightenment vision of universal justice, of Schiller's World Court; the problem is, injustice is always particular. In a sense, the notion of an abstract universal is the postmodern version of invoking the deity's name, and asking, why do the Heavens not darken -- legitimate as protest, but not as a guide to policy. The question is, how is injustice to be concretely resisted?
> many more innocent civilians. This means accepting that any action taken
> other than accepting the Taliban's offer to hand over bin Laden is
> unacceptable and murderous, period.
It's not that simple. Doing nothing at all is also tantamount to mass murder -- not just in the sense of letting Afghanistan's agony go on, or in the sense that additional attacks by al-Qaeda are a sure bet, but in the sense that global capitalism will continue to grind away, destroying inconceivable amounts of human and ecological life, and blighting countless others. No reasonably focused military action can come close to matching neoliberalism's body count.
I'm still waiting to hear viable alternatives to Operation Blue Helmet.
-- Dennis