When I spoke at the Chicago Coalition vs, Racism and War Rally for the NLG, I said that when a crime has been committed, you don't bomb the suspects' neighborhood, you get the evidence, get a warraant, and bust the bad guys. This drew applause. All the speakers there agreed that Sept 11 was a criminal and terroristic act. jks
>>We need a Left that can say Yes- yes to justice, yes to tolerance, yes to
>peace, yes to rational policy that will both save lives globally while
>making Americans secure in a more peaceful and cooperative world.
>
>If the Left can't promise security to the American people, then will be
>irrelevant politically and will remain so. Luckily, if the Left can just
>have the guts to vote down the WWPnicks, the policy most of the democratic
>left supports does promise that security, namely:
>
>- cooperative police work between nations to catch the perpetrators
>- international tribunals to try them for war crimes to assure global
>acceptance of their trials
>- addressing real grievances of the muslim world (such as the Palestinian
>cause) to isolate the murderers from the general population
>- global economic justice to eliminate the misery which feeds resentment
>against the US and sympathy for such terrorism
>- defense of civil liberties in favor of sane security measures that don't
>breed more police abuses and cycles of resentment and violence
>
>The lesson of dealing with terrorism in every nation has been that war and
>repression doesn't solve the issue-- the goal has to be to isolate from the
>general population the violence-junkies who fester like sores on misery.
>Rational security is useful but ultimately addressing real misery and real
>suffering leaves those violence junkies isolated and without legitimacy,
>leaving them to eventual exposure by previous allies more interested in
>preserving a just peace than risking new rounds of violence by leaving such
>terrorists loose.
>
>But without the just peace as a precondition, no one will turn the
>terrorists over and help destroy them. Until that point, terrorism is
>supported passively as the tool of the weak whose inaction allows it to
>survive. The raw reality that the Bush bombers have to learn is that you
>can't bomb these passive non-actors into action, you need to positively
>solicit their action in a cooperative world through real justice.
>
>That lesson in attaining security is what the Left has to offer the
>American people. Until we start offering it, rather than the thin gruel of
>morally blind empty anti-war rhetoric, the Left will be politically
>irrelevant in this debate.
>
>Nathan Newman
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