React now with force and care

BY NATHAN LITTLEFIELD

Nevertheless, now that the debris has begun to settle in Manhattan, we must return to the fact that the hijacking of four commercial jetliners and their use in the brutal and unprovoked murder of American civilians is an act of war. No history and no amount of suffering can excuse the perpetrators of such criminal aggression. There is no equivalency between so-called "cultural imperialism" or "economic subjugation" and mass murder. Those who seek to mitigate the horror of this act by asking us to understand the context and motivations of the people who carried it out are, as Political Science Professor Steven B. Smith said in the Thurs., Sept. 13 edition of the Yale Daily News, guilty of an intellectual and moral failure of incomprehensible magnitude.

We must check our facts, and then check them again. Racist and ignorant responses certainly cannot be tolerated. Yet if we do confirm that bin Laden is at fault, he and his entire organization must be targeted. This is not to say we should strike at the government or people of Afghanistan. The Taliban has publicly condemned the attack, and Afghanistan is a country of such misery and deprivation that military action against it could only worsen the situation of its people and increase their anger against us. Though Afghanistan has sheltered bin Laden for years, it is a country well-deserving of mercy. No response to Tuesday's atrocity could better show the difference between us and the attackers than both sparing Afghanistan the horrors of war and helping to rebuild their country after its own two-decade conflict.

However, bin Laden and his followers deserve no such consideration. The U.S. does not have the luxury of a peaceful response to terrorists. Nor is a halfhearted action sufficient. This is a situation far beyond the realm of lobbing cruise missiles at a few mountain camps. Should bin Laden and his men be to blame, they have forfeited any claim they might once have had on our mercy. Our response must be swift, strong, and unequivocal. Our military has the capability to strike decisively against terrorist enclaves while minimizing danger to civilians. This capacity must be used to its full extent. Those behind this atrocity have committed an act of war and must be made to understand the full consequences of their actions.

As much as war might offend the sensibilities of many Yalies, terrorists will respond to nothing else. A quiescent Amer-ica will be seen as a weak, easy target. Peace may provide a temporary balm to Yalies' idealism; it will mean a lot less the next time we crowd around our TVs, wondering whose friends and relatives are trapped in the rubble. We cannot allow apologists, bogus victimology, or past foreign policy mistakes to tie our hands. The world stands united behind us. We remain capable of decisive and honorable action. We remain capable of delivering a just response to an atrocity of such staggering evil that it cannot go unanswered.

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