>NO political leader could be expected to
>suffer an attack such as 9/11 and immediately
>begin to negotiate with the attacker. And the
>U.S. doesn't even have a political leader, unless
>it's bill o'reilly.
>So some U.S.-delivered mayhem proportional to 9/11, not
>necessarily well-targeted, is
>a necessary precondition for any negotiation in the best
>of circumstances, from the standpoint of the peace
>camp.
While this might be expected, it is militarily and politically stupid, since it actually weakens our hand in all subsequent negotiations by eroding the global (and even national) support for the US position. The US emerged out of S11 with the aura of victimhood - in some ways an astounding moral position for the US from which to rally political support against the Taliban and Bin Laden.
As this inconclusive murder of civilians in the name of destroying terrorism continues, the ongoing deaths involved in many ways are backdated to morally justify the S11 attacks as merely "tit-for-tat." Since fighting terrorism is inherently a political endeavor in the end in isolating and delegitimating them, the bombing campaign is a rather costly psychic venting of national spleen.
If we could drop a bomb and kill Bin Laden and the top Taliban leadership, I wouldn't shed a tear, but that's not what is possible
No, we needn't have negotiated immediately, but there were a host of techniques available to isolate Bin Laden and track his thousands of compatriots in now (and maybe only now) friendly countries willing to assist us. It is the forfeiting of that essential cooperation that we will suffer due to the killings of Afgani civilians.
There is a part of me that is almost relieved that the US has lowered itself from the temporary moral high ground it attained after S11, since Bush might have been far more dangerous on the international stage in coming years if he had help onto it with a more strategic approach. But the American population is going to suffer far more terrorism with far less sympathy internationally than we would have without this stupid bombing campaign.
Nathan Newman