Almost immediately after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the media were abuzz with talk of President Bush repealing the ban on assassination in order to deal with (seek revenge on) bin Laden. I, in my pre-post-political state, wrote to the White House expressing concern that justice could not ever be conferred by such an act. Could we not, I asked in my best rhetorical fashion, instead use the Milosevic model and bring bin Laden before a court of law? I’m sure the administration got more than a few chuckles out of my letter. [Or maybe, they took me too seriously and just let the sonofabitch go.]

Is the death of Milosevic justice or just justice deferred? If all men are mortal—as any mediocre logic student can recite—then isn’t there some justice in the expiration of one of the truly evil men? [But, of course, one man does not cause a war: there is an entire system of power and control that articulated this madman’s vision. Are those individuals not somehow just as culpable?] Can we not, he asks again in gorgeous rhetorical fashion, enjoy the built-in justice dispensed by the universe with the death of each individual? There may be multitudes of evil, but they too will breathe their last breaths. To me, that seems much more just than any paltry form of revenge doled out by the earth-bound (so-called) liberal democracies. I mean, rarely—if ever—does the grid of justice line up with the judicial code anyway, so why not just let nature run its course?

All these things might be of some importance to me if I still retained a single political bone in my body. But I’ve renounced all politics and political leanings in this political shantytown of Amerika. I too shall one day breathe my last, and I don’t want to be thinking about such mundane things when I do.