>You are mistaken about the grounds on which I was
>criticized. Several people on thist lsit suggested
>that I was naive to think anything less than military
>force would do to root out al Qaida. No one that I
>recall said taht there was no difference between the
>two approaches.
I'm the one who jumped on your case. Carrol did, too. It's under the thread, "Re: Is there a nonviolent response to September 11?" (october 10ish) I don't know who else criticized you so maybe you could find the posts in the archive or your critics might step forward. But, to my recollection, the overwhelming responses were:
1. just say no to war AND bringing them to justice in any way whatsoever 2. pursuing them through conventional juridico-legal mechanisms
You, yourself, suggested the use of Rangers to root them out.
>Sure it would have been less violent and murderous.
You proposed it as a non-violent approach on a thread asking if there were any non-violent approaches. I criticized you and others for thinking it a non-violent solutions.
>The spooks and the cops don't have B-52s and
>helicopter gunships and the like. The collateral
>damage would have been a lot less. Moreover, it's
>morally superior to respond to crime as a crime rather
>than a declaratiuon of war, with all that entails.
>
> >
> > Now mind you, that's what I preferred--criminal
> > investigation. The
> > difference, for me, was that I wasn't about to lie
> > to myself and suggest
> > that it would be necessarily less bloody.
> >
>
>"Necessarily," that's a nice weasel word.
It's not a weasel word--not if you look at the examples I gave as to why not to trust the US as "police" and "criminal investigators".
> Why did you
>prefer a police investigation if you thought it would
>be the same?
Actually, now that I look back on it, what I advocated was that we posture with "Come and get us again on our turf fuckers" and, otherwise, nothing. It's a classic pacifist position where the defense is acceptable. Which was really funny because every time I defended Doug against ridiculous readings of his position, I was accused of attacking the peaceniks. I'm not a pacifist at all--e.g., I support insurrection against the capitalist state and the inevitability of violence in any sort of revo.
archivally,
Kelley