In partial response to Matt Xanderhod:
First, were these attacks acts of war? It is pretty clear to me that Osama bin Laden (or whoever planned the attacks) sees them as acts of war. [etc.]
A speculative point of clarification: I would suggest that the Responsible Parties see these as acts of a war that is already ongoing. Not to flog Clausewitz's horse, but what constitutes war is as much a matter of expediency as anything else. That said, I would agree with you that increased conflict is a desired goal of the perps. At the same time, and at the risk of being jingoistic, I think they may have underestimated just how stubborn Americans can be. We've grown soft and fat from too many years of prosperity and self-indulgence, but when God is on our side (as apparently it is, since W said so in his speech and he's got 90% approval ratings these days), we're fairly hard to lick. Trouble is, they've got God on their side also. (And I refuse to make the distinction between using the word God and Allah. That's a veiled bigotry that I can't stand.)
Second, should we now behave as if we're at war? I say no. This may sound strange, but I think that we should NOT treat the attacks as acts of war precisely because that's what the perpetrators want us to do. [etc]
A set of points, and one which bears acting on, but I would draw the distinction between what we should do and what of the actually possible options we should do. Since tit-for-tat is the ruling principle here, I would second your mention of covert teams. I have it on good authority (to wit, my father, a 22-year Marine Corps veteran) that people living in caves are highly unlikely to be "smoked out," as the detestable metaphor runs*, by conventional attacks. A missile can land within a stone's throw or closer to a cave and the inhabitants will be perhaps deafened and nervous, but they will not be otherwise harmed. The Marines managed to island-hop in the closing year of WWII, but only fairly slowly and by adapting techniques to the terrain and the enemy. Vietnam provides the clear contrast.
Further, I am skeptical of the conventional wisdom that holds that a headless al-Qaeda is no different from, and perhaps more dangerous than, a bin Laden-headed al-Qaeda. The metaphor chosen by J.P. Lederach (as reprinted in Ishbadiddle) is that of a virus. One flaw in this metaphor(since all metaphors have at least one) is that there is one identifiable source of this virus's growth and well-being, and that bottleneck is bin Laden. I'm no expert on him or al-Qaeda, but it seems to me as though even the experts are only referring to him. Not to lieutenants, not to similar organizations and their leaders, but to him. That would suggest that if we obtain him (and concomitantly cut off his funding), we will do significant damage, so as to set back his plans by many years. During that time, of course, I suggest we work on the other aspects of the problem, elucidated quite well by Messrs. Xanderhod and Lederach.
Ethically, [snip] I think we need to have SOME ethical standards like these or we risk lowering ourselves to the level of terrorists.
At the risk of being too world-weary, I proffer that we have long since lowered ourselves to the level of terrorists and state-sponsorship of terrorism. Perhaps is is worth desiring and working so that we begin to have some ethics, but denouncing terrorism in the name of God and then defending military action in the name of God seems to me highly lacking in ethics.
The other aspect of "waging war" that frightens me is the effects here in the US. Already, we are hearing calls for large scale-backs of privacy rights and, to a lesser extent, civil rights — some coming from John Ashcroft . . .
*This is where the asterisk above comes in. Though the discussion about the encoded nature of contemporary racism belongs to another day, I'd like to strongly second Matt's concern here. The dominant contrasts being made — in the Paper of Record as well as in the government's language — are unsettling, to say the least. Saying that this is a fight between the civilized and the uncivilized (I had someone actually say to me that 'these people' were worse than animals because 'at least animals care for their children'), between cowards and the brave, between a known 'God' and a strange 'Allah', all encourage the vilification of non-Jewish Semites and South/Central Asians despite the casual assurances to the contrary. Tigers not changing their stripes and all that.
With this last point in mind, I'd like to suggest that we all write our various national, state, and local representatives, asking that they make an unmistakable statement that there shall be no singling out of Arabs or South Asians for restrictive treatment, whether couched in terms of protection or of national security, during this conflict.
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