Michael Howard's speech is a pleasure to read, especially in light of the fact that his advice will, I hope, be ignored.
"Whatever its military justification, the bombing of Afghanistan, with the inevitable 'collateral damage' it causes, will gradually whittle away the immense moral ascendancy that we enjoyed as a result of the bombing of the World Trade Center."
I don't want moral ascendancy. I want victory over the people who just murdered 5,000 Americans. Find them. Kill them. If they become martyrs, that's fine with me. I don't care if a billion Muslims put pictures of Osama over their beds at night, as long as they stay in their beds. If they come and mess with my country, then find them and kill them.
This nonsense about "creating a martyr" only worries those who hope to make the problem go away overnight. We've learned, as a result of this atrocity, that there are already millions of Muslims in the world who hate the West on general principles. We'll have to deal with them for decades to come. That'll be true whether Osama lives or dies. So let's get the process off to a rollicking start by killing his sorry ass and everybody else we can find who works with him. There'll be plenty more work needed beyond that--police and intelligence work, mostly, to slap down any Osama wannabes left behind. But we'd have to do that in any case, whether we go to war or not.
Going to war against this mass-murdering maniac is exactly the right thing to do. And much as I hate to say it, all the death and destruction we're raining down on Afghanistan will send exactly the message that needs conveying. You hate America? Fine. We don't even care. But keep your hatred to yourself. Don't bring it over here unless you want your neighborhood turned into a parking lot. That's the message now being delivered in Afghanistan. I strongly suspect the same telegram will soon be delivered in Baghdad. Makes sense to me.
Hiawatha Bray