Hello, Dennis--

Tens of thousands of protesters marching in the streets in opposition to the actions of the greatest military power currently on the planet, and how many of them were shot, blown up, bludgeoned, etc.? Terror muzzles people. They conduct their resistance in their living rooms in secret. They print pamphlets in basements. They do not make speeches on public streetcorners. They do not hold press conferences. They do not exercise free speech rights because they do not have any.

Now, in contrast: Thousands of people go to work one beautiful morning, and sometime between breakfast and lunch, the buildings in which they are working are attacked with no warning and later collapse around them. This atrocity is a result of criminal conspiracy by a bunch of extremists being protected by the government of a small country whose people have been oppressed by said government for a decade. Said government has been told by the nation attacked to hand over the criminals to be remanded for trial by the international community. The answer has been "No".

One of the people interviewed for this article remarks that this is an issue for "international justice". I agree. Let's have someone in custody, shall we?

Picture this: A suspected mass murderer has been tracked to a particular house by the police. There are hostages in the house. The police tell the suspect to come out, and the suspect refuses, threatening to use the hostages as a human shield. The police say, "Oh, OK. We'll get you later," and allow the suspect to depart. Is this a realistic scenario?

If the Taliban were so keen on international justice, they would have arrested bin Laden and friends themselves. They are not hostages, but accessories. Their people are hostages.

The Germans interviewed (none of them old enough to have any personal memories of WWII) might remember, if they think about it, that international justice only came to Nuremburg after the Nazis were defeated, because a government of thugs is interested primarily in institutionalized thuggery, not in international justice or even the welfare of their own people.

There are things wrong with the US that we need to work on. So we're not perfect. That doesn't entitle people to kill our citizens and it doesn't require us to sit back and let them do it again.

Mary Anne