Fw:WRL on Attacks

[Manuel V. Cabrera Jr.]

    Let me make clear that I am NOT trying to mitigate the evil of yesterday's deeds.  It is foolish to think that any moderately sane person would.  What I'm worried about is that opportunistic leaders are already using it as leverage to push agendas that are as insane as those of Bin Laden.  Already, Israel has used this to bulldoze a Palestinian town and to murder at least nine Palestinians (including two elderly women and a
child--all completely unarmed).  We must also remember that the majority of the population of Afghanistan despises the Taliban regime.  It is, unfortunately, likely that the U.S. will not be discriminate in whatever destruction it seeks to wage in that country: that is, if recent history is any indication (destruction of numerous civilian targets in Iraq over the last ten years, the bombings of pharmaceutical factories in Sudan that
resulted in far more civilian deaths than yesterdays terror).  It is also likely that the U.S. will ally itself with the Northern Alliance of anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan, forces whose human rights record and repressive ideologies do not differ substanially from that of the Taliban government.
    My point is that we must collectively raise our voices to send a message to our leaders that the deaths of more innocents will not solve anything. IF Bin Laden and his cronies are responsible for yesterday's attack, they MUST be brought to justice.  But assassination violates the most dearly held juridical principle of our constitution, that of due process.  It is likely this will be completely ignored in the rush to expel
unfocused rage.


                                                                    mandel


barbara100 at jps.net wrote:

> I'm so glad to read this today and hear everyone's response. I was beginning to feel weary and outnumbered, what with the President's speech on revenge and retaliation, and my mother (staunch democrat) rooting in the background, We gotta get them bastards!  I don't know what to feel--it's so so awful--but I can't bring myself to feel angry. America must have an enormous karmic debt to pay.  Let's just pay it and learn our lessons.