yes, perhaps you find that story reasonable (i do not, but i would certainly agree it is debatable). i am only asking about the effects. here you had an attack on american soil, allegedly by some saudi arabian members of the al-qaeda. the response was to send the army to afghanistan resulting in the death of probably more than 2000-3000 afghani people (few of them part of al-qaeda). in effect, the relatives did not fan out and beat up arab-americans in the US, but instead the US army fanned out and killed a bunch of arab looking people in afghanistan.
perhaps the afghani refugees who beat up robert fisk would also have preferred to beat up rumsfeld instead, using similar reasoning to yours of trying to prevent US attacks rounds II, III, etc.
note that i do not disagree with your initial premise: that the beating up of fisk cannot be justified/condoned as natural. while fisk might use words to that effect, i think the underlying point being made by fisk and others is this: the attack of fisk by the refugees is the act of a disempowered group of people suffering from american action (and of course action of their own govt's also) and while their attacking fisk is wrong, it cannot be equated with the calculated destruction brought about by the bush administration in afghanistan. none of this condones 9/11. (just as you seem to point out the error in condoning the attack on fisk through your analogies, i am trying, perhaps mistakenly, to show that your analogies also force you to not support the US action in afghanistan).
i am not attempting to lecture you here! what i am trying to say is that i understand the argument laid out in the paragraph above. i am not very clear about the critique of it. is the critique from an absolutist kind of position? that we only evaluate the acts stand-alone? or is it that the US action in afghanistan is in fact entirely justified? why so? because of the tragedy of 9/11? the US action seems intuitively wrong to me due to the lack of even an attempt to test the taliban offer to hand over bin laden, due to the unilateral nature of the aggression, and various other such examples.
--ravi