Is there a scrupulous link between morally good policy ends and the means of achieving them?
Foreign policy analysts often chide one another with the curiosity: what is the end-game? That is, what is the state of affairs desired in a near-future? Such a question is often followed by another about whether current policies help the nation ‘to get there’. Applied to our current nightmare, what end-game would the US prefer by, let us say, 2003? The following conditions would appear to be both a desirable end-game and a morally defensible set of policy goals: – that those responsible for planning, implementing or abetting the September 11 slaughter have been apprehended, tried, convicted and are in prisons serving life sentences; – that the transnational criminal, financial and arms networks which sustain the movement and operations of these terrorists have been significantly destroyed; – that states which harbored and trained terrorists throughout the 1990s no longer do so, in part to fulfill their duties as signatories, along with virtually every state in the international system
