[Asclepius]

... atrocities ... because these others WILL feel our terrible retribution. Not a retribution out of revenge ...

Hey, man. Speak for yourself, man.

Forget justice, man. Our Moslem brothers and sisters were right to criticize us for our use of the term "justice"; to do justice implies that we are somehow in a position to mete it out, a privileged position where it is left to us and us alone to adjudicate between rival claims of right and wrong, and we aren't. Nor do we really want to be in that position.

Revenge, on the other hand, requires no position of privilege nor any justification beyond the act that provokes it. Which is why it is verboten in peer-to-peer relations within civilized polities: it contains within itself no conceptual limit (unending cycles of revenge etc.). But since those who would destroy us beneath the star and crescent of Islam do not share our democratic scruples or our trust in the normative institutions that mediate our conflicts, what other option do we have?

[Jeff Head]

Hey, man. Speak for yourself, man

I speak for none other.

But, in my experience, a mind consumed by revenge, or a purpose filled with that desire ... is a torch that will bunr itself up with its own fuel.

Justice on the other hand, can be meted out with some degree of precision (despite our being imperfect mortals) and allows one to retain the moral constraint necessary to quench the flame that would otherwise consume all.

Justice in war is the vriety of which I speak and is however much more harsh, and a more fitting retribution than the justice in America's current civilian jurice prudence system. It is that type of justice of which I speak, where the effort is made at moral constraint, but the rightous indignation and the requirement to destroy those involved is not set aside.

Again, just my experience and my thoughts on the matter ... but I believe historically and morally accurate.