Killing of innocents can't be avoided under any scenario. The Taliban kill innocents now, an unbroken al Qaeda will kill innocents in the future, a UN force would kill innocents. Our resident revolutionaries would have to concede that a revolution would kill innocents. This is an impossible standard to uphold. Doug
now you're getting the idea. we should descend the ladder of force and wallow in the slough of surrender (SOS). Like when a puppy rolls over on its back and wags its tail, though if you smacked a self- respecting puppy he would bite you.
fact is that some lefts support the war objectives of OBL, insofar as they entail constraints on the U.S. or petro-royals, notwithstanding the fact that what they don't like -- Taliban dominion, an OBL Saudi regime, or the mass death of New Yorkers -- is inseparable from the rest. You can only buy the whole package, or live in fantasy.
Forgetting about the Nazis and the holocaust for the sake of argument, I wonder if the SOS left thinks the U.S. or anyone else should have retaliated against Japan or Italy for Pearl Harbor or the invasion of Ethiopia? Invariably in such exercises, innocents will die. What would failure to respond result in?
I don't doubt that more innocents have been killed already in Afghanistan than died on 9/11. That is very sad but it is also irrelevant. The source of 9/11 aggression is going to keep on giving.
All the legalism, to which my own org (the ADA) has itself succumbed, is a crock in a military situation. You would not seek to arrest and prosecute each pilot in the Japanese Air Force for Pearl Harbor. The 'criminal' is shielded by state power. Similarly you cannot reasonably deal with a vast underground network of soldiers as a law enforcement problem. Law enforcement is a meaningful option against individuals or small gangs, not armies or vast conspiracies. It is no accident that in the latter case, the Gov finds excuses to bend the rules (i.e., RICO).
The UN solutions are not worth much either. You cannot expect effective military action by a broad coalition. The asymmetries of power make such coalitions illusory in the first place. There will be some lead dogs with closely shared goals, and some show dogs who risk little because they have little to gain. What soldier would want to put his or her life in the hands of an apparatus suffused with a plethora of political interests? There is enough of that in one country's armed forces. That's why it would be hard to muster a political majority in the U.S. for a conflict where U.S. soldiers were not under the command indirectly of polticians who have at least a smidgeon of local accountability.
The many-named-babe made a point that has been glossed over: sometimes all of the choices suck. They still have to be made. We, and I do mean 'we,' have been attacked. We would be fools not to accept the need of the Gov to respond, not because that is what everybody thinks, nor because it is easy to do, nor because the Gov is an effective or legitimate instrument for such purposes, but because it is the only way to do what must be done.
mbs