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Is it when 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000 all die pretty much at once, as on September 11? I think everyone would agree that yeah, that's an atrocity and the perpetrators should be identified, apprehended and tried for a crime against humanity.
But what are we to make of a nation pursues and enforces sanctions against another country that it knows will result in thousands of slow, agonizing deaths for the citizens (mostly the very young and the very old)? What should we say about a nation that continues this policy for year after year after year, when it's long past clear that the policy is a complete failure in attaining its stated objective, the overthrow of the sanctioned country's dictator? What sort of defense is there for that nation when its own analysts acknowledge from the beginning that the policy is intended to kill thousands every year, slowly and remorselessly? And this is just in one country, Iraq. The United States has piled up bodies of innocents all over the globe, in Afghanistan, East Timor, Mozambique, Somalia, The Sudan, the Balkan nations, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, just to name a few. Is the U.S. always and everywhere totally in the right?
If we have a just cause to pursue Osama bin Laden for the attacks of Sept. 11, do other countries have a just cause against the United States for its actions? How should those claims be adjudicated? If the U.S. is justified in indiscriminate bombing in Afghanistan in pursuit of Bin Laden, would Chile be justified in bombing targets in the U.S. in pursuit of Henry Kissinger?
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