I was one of those present at the DuPage Peace Through Justice Coalition's Rally on Nov. 11 that you deprecated in your editorial of Nov. 16 ("No action was not an option").

   I am surprised that you consider diplomacy and negotiations and supporting international agencies in the enforcement of international law to be "no action."  Is cutting off the funding transfers to the Al Qaeda terrorists also "no action"?  How about increasing airline security?  Is that too "no action"?  I heard speakers at the rally advocate all of those actions.

   Perhaps your editorial writer believes that bombing is the only action that can be effective, but many of us oppose the bombing because we see it as doomed to failure. There is a far greater chance that military action against Islamic states will backfire, inflaming a significant portion of the world's population against us and breeding thousands of terrorists where there once were dozens. The fact that these criminals have used violence against the innocent does not give us license to do likewise.

   Just because George W. Bush has adopted the language of war and the military is no reason that we should follow suit. The persons who planned and perpetrated the acts of 9/11 are not warriors, they are criminals. They did not engage in a battle; they massacred innocent civilians. In a civilized society, criminals are dealt with by the police. The police find them, capture them and hold them in jail for trial. The police use cameras, evidence kits, handcuffs, fingerprint kits and, very rarely, clubs and firearms. The police do not have unlimited license to capture or kill the friends or families of the criminals.

   In contrast, the military's job is to kill people and destroy things. Their tools are bombers, missiles, tanks, cluster bombs, cannons and machine guns. If they capture members of an enemy force, they put them in prison — there is no judge or trial. They invented the term"collateral damage." If a cop blew up the wrong building or killed some innocent people, he or she would be charged, tried, and, if found guilty, punished. Have you heard that any members of the U.S. military have even been reprimanded for killing innocent people or destroying their property?

   Let's be realistic. A military response to criminals will only make things worse. If a trial under international law was good enough for Slobodan Milosevic and good enough the Pan Am bombers, it is good enough for the 9/11 criminals.

 John Bagley, Naperville

11/30/01