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On a purely legal basis, the big difference is that our attacks on Afghanistan are being made after a legal declaration of war, whereas the attacks on NYC were a surprise attack with no declaration. But that's quibbling. The real answer is that this war is not being fought for justice. There have been a few commentators who have tried to portray this as a just war, but that's not the rationale for fighting it, and I don't make any bones about it. My opinion is that it doesn't matter whether its just: it's necessary and that is sufficient even if it is unjust. He argues that this war will proliferate terrorism. That's not by any means certain; his argument is that this war will anger many people, which is probably true. But angry people do not necessarily instantly transform into terrorists, and an international terrorist campaign such as the one launched by al Qaeda is not simply a manifestation of anger. It requires organization, training, and in particular it requires a great deal of money -- and those are things which can be eliminated. A million angry people without any of those things are much less dangerous than ten thousand who have them. If we can anger many people but eliminate their ability to organize, train and finance a campaign against us, we will reduce international terrorism. Ultimately his argument comes down to an extended attempt to show moral equivalence between the two sides, a concept I find both intellectually repugnant and totally irrelevant. But I don't feel the need to defend that repugnance because the irrelevance is sufficient. Even if we were fighting this war for selfish partisan unjust reasons, it would still be worth fighting. I want to fight this war not to uphold some sort of shining international emblem of justice and fairness, but simply to protect my fellow citizens from being attacked again. Someone is going to die in this war -- on that we Americans don't have a choice. Our only choice is whether it will be more Americans, or someone else somewhere else. I unhesitatingly affirm my belief that it is sufficient for us to fight to protect ourselves -- and if the price of that is other people elsewhere dying, so be it. His other arguments are equally fatuous: for example, he argues that we can't be certain we will win, as if this somehow suggests we shouldn't try. But when is anything we ever do certain? Life is risky; you have to make decisions and stick with them. The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never attempts to do anything. It's entirely possible that this war will go dreadfully wrong; but I think the chance of that is low -- and it doesn't matter anyway. Of course, it doesn't help that he's distorting history on occasion: Recall that in the midst of the Gulf War, the U.S. military bombed an air raid shelter, killing 400 to 500 men, women, and children who were huddled to escape bombs. The claim was that it was a military target, housing a communications center, but reporters going through the ruins immediately afterward said there was no sign of anything like that. First off, those people were not huddling to escape bombs: they'd been collected by the Iraqi government and placed there as a human shield to try to keep us from bombing that installation. Second, it was a communications center; his idea that reporters said otherwise is sheer fantasy. Now if someone deliberately plants civilians on top of a military target and then they are killed, who's fault is that? Well, he seems to think that it's the fault of those who dropped the bombs. Problem with that is that it completely devalues the single most important aspect of war: to win. If our enemy can make targets off limits by putting civilians on top of them, then we can't win. If we're only permitted to fight a war in such a way as to guarantee that no civilian is ever harmed, then we can't win. But it's clear that he doesn't want us to win. Not one human life should be expended in this reckless violence called a "war against terrorism." That's utter claptrap. We didn't start the killing, and even if we didn't do anything to kill, our enemies still would. He claims that he doesn't like to characterize himself as a pacifist because it's suggests something absolute. Damned straight it does, and his argument demonstrates that he is indeed a pacifist. How, exactly, does he expect us to prevent al Qaeda from killing more of us without our taking the fight to them? Pacifism, which I define as a rejection of war, rests on a very powerful logic. In war, the means--indiscriminate killing--are immediate and certain; the ends, however desirable, are distant and uncertain. This characterization of war is a distortion which resembles an outright lie: war is far from indiscriminate killing; on the contrary, war is carefully targeted violence for a political end. But to him it's clear that "indiscriminate killing" is one word and there can be no other kind. Pacifism does not mean "appeasement." That word i | |||
