"Andrew C. Greenberg" <werdna at mucow.com> wrote:
	Stephen was not arguing so much against reflection and introspection as 
	against the suggestion that the evil of this obscenity can be overlooked 
	for any "reasons" raised in its defense.

That may have been what he meant, but it is not what he wrote.

	It is entirely unnecessary --for purposes of justice-- to contemplate 
	any reasons purporting to account for the act.

This is the same kind of tunnel vision that gets software projects into
deep trouble, and it is ethically and jurisprudentially false.
It is considered normal in at least the Common Law countries to consider
the criminal's history and mental state both in order to determine an
appropriate sentence and to predict the likelihood of reoffence.

It is also necessary to "ponder" in order to decide who the criminals are.
There is such a thing as conspiracy, and bombing the heck out of one
country is going to do nothing about the other members of those groups
in other countries.

But the justice that I had in mind was justice to the next lot of
innocent *Americans* to die.  To simply lash out without "pondering"
in revenge without tackling the causes will be to contribute to more
*American* deaths, and that is not justice to those future victims.

	The premeditated murder of thousands directly, and indirectly
	hundreds more of our bravest and best, cannot have been in
	self-defense, nor been undertaken in the "heat of passion," as
	those justifications are understood in Western jurisprudence.
	
But these people are not Westerners, and they think it _was_ a kind of
defence.  (This doesn't mean I agree with them.  I've read the Koran,
and as far as I can see this was as monstrous by Islamic standards as
by Western standards.)  Never forget:  many thousands of people have
died in the Middle East as a consequence of American policy and arms.

I firmly believe that it is evil to kill even one innocent (or possibly
innocent) human (or possibly human) being.  What happened last week was
WRONG, *EVIL*.

But peace and justice go hand-in-hand.  There can be such a thing as a
just war (Beverly Nichols, a British journalist and very prominent
pacifist, wrote after WWII that he was wrong about that one).  Most wars
are rather like feuds.

What's the answer to feuds?  THE RULE OF LAW.

What we all need at this time is lots of pondering and the rule of law.