Sticks, rocks, spears, swords, bows, guns, bombs; the same military pageant we’ve seen put on time after time, by nation after nation in book after book and film after film. It’s not hard to imagine one of our F-18s fighter-bombers taking off from its carrier for another sortie over the low hills. It’s not hard to imagine because our TVs and movies have shown us, and our newspapers are centerfolds of just what war-making technology the enemy can expect.

Imagine the soldier or group of soldiers who eventually find bin Laden trembling in a cave, or stuffed into a car trunk trying to flee across the border. Would it be like nabbing Hitler (finally!)? What then? Bring him back to the States in chains? Place him in stocks at Ground Zero and pelt him with rotten produce? Death by a thousand cuts? No, if he’s taken alive we should try him in open court, accord him his due process, not because he deserves it; he doesn’t deserve any such thing. We should accord him due process because it is part of who we are; we’ll not do it for him, we’ll do it for ourselves.

Our president keeps throwing around the word “evil.” They are evil, he says, we are good. Such easy distinctions are a panacea for small minds. Has the United States ever been guilty of comparable evil to that perpetrated on September 11? In a constitutional republic, such questions can never be inappropriate, despite what government mouthpieces might suggest. This is not a time to shy away from difficult issues, but to confront them head on: Has the government of the United States ever supported, directly or indirectly, such terror? The answer would have to be yes. It may have been done for a variety of reasons and even with the best of intentions, but this fact remains: innocent men, women, children have suffered and been murdered, families have been destroyed and mothers and fathers wept because of our policies.

Over the last weeks in my country there has been an outpouring of grief unlike anything I’ve ever seen; in our papers, our magazines, our television shows. It is painful to recognize that, in the past, our government has been the cause of such grief in others. This is not to suggest, of course, that we should forego our pursuit of the terrorists and their networks, only to provide some much needed context as our media and politicians continue in what seems to be permanent high dudgeon.

Do we have other options? Could Osama bin Laden have possibly expected anything other than a military response? From what I have read and seen, bin Laden is not a man who wants peace. Bin Laden wants war, which is exactly what we are determined to give him. Would it disappoint him if we tried something else?

Gandhi was once asked if non-violence could work against a man like Hitler. He was not sure; there would be loss, he replied, there would be suffering. But, he continued, is there not loss and suffering under the current method?

Passive resistance is an inaccurate term to describe the methods of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Their goal was to use nonviolence to confront the perpetrators of violence with the perpetrator’s own inhumanity, to show him a picture of himself that he could not bear. Could this work with bin Laden? Perhaps not; he believes God is rooting for him. But an innovative non-military strategy could work to win the essential support of the Islamic world, perhaps shrink the pool of volunteers from which bin Laden draws his willing agents. Unfortunately, with every bomb that’s dropped on Afghanistan, that pool becomes larger. After thousands of years of human existence, we’re still using sticks and stones to settle our disputes. It’s time for something new.

Matthew Duss is a freelance writer living in Seattle. He is a member of the New Style Collective, a group supporting local independent art and research. He can be reached at mduss@hotmail.com

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