Features

Editor: 

Osama Bin Laden has certainly earned our wrath, whether guilty or not of last week’s attacks. While his 1998 “fatwah” urging Muslims to kill US civilians might be viewed as merely inflammatory, his admitted involvement (training attackers) in the 1993 killing of eighteen US servicemen in Somalia would already demand his being stopped. 

Poverty stricken Afghanis could hardly resist the charismatic millionaire who offered humanitarian and logistical support in exchange for residency - and why should they? The notion of forgoing food and shelter for idealism is a conceit held by those who lack neither, and adopting the ideals of one’s benefactor is, historically, a seeming law of nature. 

Let’s say we find definitive proof that Bin Laden coordinated these latest attacks on America. And that he is hunted down and killed. Surely the death of one man won’t quell our agony, nor quench our thirst for revenge, so, we kill hundreds or even thousands of Afghan citizens, since the president’s decree condemns those who harbor him. Will we then feel avenged? How many of those guilty-by-nationality or religion must die before we’ll feel “OK”?  

Chris Rasmussen 

Berkeley