Restoring justice.

• Author: Bishop, Barry N.
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the Editor

Howard Zinn is certainly correct that the United States and the world have a just cause against the terrorists and also that the current response to terrorism is a crime. However, justice is a slippery concept. Zinn rightly turns to ethical judgments of what we are doing, which is murder in response to murder. Justice as commonly practiced often rationalizes a punitive response--including murder--to crime. Most U.S. justice is punitive and vengeful. Ethics, however, judges an action by a less relativistic standard.

There are, however, other models of justice led by the intention to restore a damaged community to health, and informed by caring rather than vengefulness. The legitimate pacifist response to September 11 must seek a justice that...