Ted,
And yet, Joe, it would appear that you are ready to go after bin Laden on NO evidence.
Evidence is just one of many factors that should go into deciding whether or not to go to war. Much more important reasons are whether the country is hostile, what is the ambition of the country, how aggressive it is, does it threaten US interests, US citizens or even US homeland, is there an immediate incident that would justify declaration of war (and this is where the evidence comes in.)
With Serbia, the country was not hostile to the US, the only ambition Serbia had at the time was to salvage as much as possible from it's disintegrating country, it in no way threatened the US, US interests, citizens or US territory. The incident that sparked the war was a negotiating misstep of an inexperienced State department team, where they gave Serbia an ultimatum, and they couldn't find their way out of it. The incident to jusify going to war was "developed" stated after the fact, it was all this genocide talk, of which there not only was there no evidence at the time, the test of time proved the premise it to be false.
In case of bin Laden and Taliban, they are openly hostile to the US, in fact bin Laden declared war on the US (kind of a strange thing for an individual to do, but he inflicted more damage on the US than many foreign powers). The ambition of the bin Laden is to kill Americans and Jews everywhere. As far as the incident that would justify our response, there were numerous: attacks on US embassies in Africa, attack on US troops in Saudi Arabia, attack on the US ship in Yemen (at least 2 of the 3), and the recent attacks. As far as evidence, apparently we had enough evidence on this guy even prior to this attack, when we fired some cruise missiles at Afganistan, and I don't recall anyone disputing the fact that we had the right guy, just the strategy of the attacks. As far as the current attacks, the preliminary evidence is pointing to bin Laden, and since we already have more than enough on the guy even prior to the attack
If we assassinate bin Laden and there is no evidence that he is directly guilty, we create the Islam martyr for the 21st century.
Are you serious about this "no evidence" or just playing the devil's advocate?
Joe |
