Hello Mr. Goldsmith,

thank you for your nicely balanced article of Wednesday, April 2, 2008, at 7:12 AM ET in <link>

For humanitarian reasons fighting a foreign country should be restricted to defence and it's been a long time since the US has been attacked by the military of an outside government. Perhaps you want to talk about the US government directly or indirectly destroying foreign governments and their representatives. In this way you could help to reduce bloodshed and injustice accompanied by the use of military weapons. Please think about the idea of capturing obvious international terrorists alive and handing them over to Den Haag.

This leads to the question of Guantanamo legality and military courts. One can easily imagine security without humiliation to the prisoners involved, since funding is not a topic bearing in mind the total costs of US foreign operations. A classic idea is to shed some light on the situation from an opposite position: Nobody would want an US citizen imprisoned under Guantanamo conditions in another country, say Iran, China or Syria and submitted to their military courts.
Certainly it would be a better solution to hand the international terrorists over to an international tribunal and have them sentenced in a civilized way. You already stated the problem involved: If there is no evidence of crime you would eventually have to let go an individual under suspicion. Afterwards he would walk free but certainly not unattended, thus permitting better insight in terrorist activities. Not to forget: The end of the cold war has left plenty of international secret servants without work. Lots of them have been redirected to industrial espionage abroad but some of them could return to the political ground doing surveillance on suspects who have escaped their just sentence on lack of evidence.
Linked to the legal fragility of Guantanamo is the question of interrogation techniques. Same as before: What would the US position be if xy-country was applying US technique (taken from DoD rules or the CIA) on an US citizen in order to find out about future US plans of attack?

Looking into the future: according to my opinion a good collaboration of the US in the further development of international agreements (e.g. The Geneva Convention) is crucial. In 20 years time China will play an even more important role than today and we all will be glad to have those agreements up to date to guide global politics. We shall not forget the ugly moment when an US president was asked about his compliance with the Geneva Convention and he answered "I'll ask my lawyer". It is this bad example given by shooting first, talking later and thinking last.

I do not want to play down 9/11 but without doubt in the past 5 years the people in Iraq have seen worse. Mr. Blix had made a good analysis of the situation inside Iraq before the last war. None of his results had to be revised and still the US government did not accept his findings. Persons with knowledge of body language can still remember the unease of Mr. Powell when he was urged to present the obvious government lies about WMD in front of the UN. The questions arising are “Why was the liar fraction so influential?” and “How can we prevent the drama to repeat?”. I can still remember the servant of the US office of foreign affairs who was asked about his relevant information. Then he said “I’m not a fool, I like my job and I still want to be in office next year”.

I hope for change, but I do not know whether the supporters of this slogan can achieve it. Still I hope the next US government will be strong enough to solve the riddle about the anthrax attack from inside the US directed towards a Senator of the US Congress who just wanted to start an inquiry or a debate asking “Why was 9/11 aimed at the USA?”.
There are so many dictators in this world, the people in Darfour are suffering, in Myanmar the Nobel Prize winner Ang San Suu Kyi has to live under house arrest at the will of a military regime, pirates are using military weapons at sea ... and so on – plenty of work to do for US diplomacy if they felt an obligation to improve the situation. But Mr. Bush chose Iraq, selected the army instead of the diplomatic corps and stunned the world speaking obvious lies. Who wants to forget about the British secret service officer who died after his analysis of the Iraq situation was distorted and therewith formed the basis of the British engagement in the alliance? Perhaps some political scientist could try and find out “Why, really why did Iraq get under US attack?”.

Curiously waiting for your answer
with best regards
Gunther Bolte

gunbol@yahoo.com