To The Editor:
"Bring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to justice," - in other words have them be dead or preferably trialed, then dead. Through a narrow objective with bin Laden, which could have been achieved with some diplomacy and/or bombing and bullets, you can't destroy al Qaeda, it's next to impossible at this point. The primary reason why we are bombing Afghanistan at this point is because we are technically fighting terrorists and Americans aren't directly dying in the process. Even if you kill bin Laden, it really will not weaken al Qaeda, there are plenty more like him from where he came from. But how do we actually bring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to justice?
At the current situation it's much too late to change our policy to do any good in this situation. We can't nuke/bomb/bio-warfare them because we don't know where they are; the terrorists (the "pawns") that are actually attacking this country (planes/anthrax) are not in Afghanistan.
All we know is that those that set the plan in motion are in Afghanistan. It's probably in our best interest to capture "them" (those that came up with the plan) alive so we can torture them to figure out how they operate - "Know thy enemy."
We can't deal with unconventional terrorists with conventional means. With the bombing, we can actually increase Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network by building up a bigger anti-American hate group. Let's take an example just for the hell of it: What if someone punches you in the nose, will not fighting back solve the problem? Sure, but not if that someone has a good lawyer or is part of the mob. It might solve the most direct problem but not always in the long run.
I disagree with Bush and the overwhelming majority not because I'm a peace-loving hippie but because the bombings really shoots up his ratings. The government isn't stupid, power is everything.
