Just to keep things rolling along, 'George Dublya' said that; "If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents they become outlaws and murderers themselves. And they will take that lonely path at their own peril".
Yesterday I was reminded, in a 'The Guardian' newspaper article, that; 'For the past 55 years the US has been running a terrorist training camp, whose victims massively out-number the people killed by the attack on New York, the embassy bombings and the other atrocities laid, rightly or wrongly, at Al-Qaeda's door'.
Since 1946 it has graduated 60,000 Latin American soldiers and policemen. Among its graduates are many of that continent's most notorious torturers, mass murderers, dictators and state terrorists.
((Estrada; 40% of the cabinet ministers under the genocidal regimes of Garcia, Montt, and Victores; 66% of those guilty of the atrocities in El Salvador; Pinochet's key men; Argentina's dictators - Viola and Galtieri; Panama's Noriega and Torrijos; Peru's Alvarado; Ecuador's Rodriguez;; the leader of the death squad under Peru's Fujimori; four of the five who ran the infamous Battalion 3-16 in Honduras (more death squads plus the 1994 Ocosingo massacre in Mexico); and the two who murdered peace commissioner, Alex Lopera in 1999; and now numerous graduates running paramilitary groups in Colombia - commisssioning kidnappings, disappearances, toture, murders and massacres.))
The FBI defines terrorism as "violent acts...intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a government, or affect the conduct of a government'.
In 1996, the US Government was forced to release seven of the school's training manuals. Among other tips for terrorists, they recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.
The camp is called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation, or WHISC, based at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. Until last year it was known as the 'School of the Americas' or SOA. Because of various exposures by the UN and the pressure group 'SOA Watch' the US House of Representatives voted to close it, but then immediately re-opened it under the new name. That was so that it washed its hands of the past. A senator later told the papers that the changes were 'basically cosmetic'.
So, given that the evidence linking the School to continuing atrocities in Latin America is stronger than the evidence linking the Al-Qaeda training camps to the attack on New York and Washington, what should be done about the 'evil-doers' in Fort Benning, Georgia?
We could urge our governments to apply full diplomatic pressure, and to seek the extradition of the School's commanders for trial on charges of complicity in crimes against humanity.
Alternatively, we could demand that our governments attack the United States, bombing its military installations, cities and airports in the hope of overthrowing its unelected government and replacing it with a new administration overseen by the UN.
You object that this prescription is ridiculous, and I agree.
But try as I might, I cannot see the moral difference between this course of action and the war now being waged in Afganistan!