[mburbank]

"we will stay, we will fight, and we will win the war on terror"
W

"THESE WORDS NEEDED TO BE SAID."
-Kristol


Okay, first off, I think Kristol must be deaf, as I've heard pretty much this speech at VERY least once a month for over a year now.

Second, and here lies my biggest problem, not just with W, but with this entire war...

What would winning the war on terror mean?

Me, I don't think you can win a war on a concept.

Far from thinking this is just bad grammar, I think it's deliberate. Crafting a ntional and foreigbn policy with a nebulous forever war at it's core is quite deliberate. We don't know really what the war on terror is. No one has bothered to say what winning it would mean, or how we would get there or even if it's possible. War time presidents are granted extraordinary powers. This administration intends for those powers to be held by the office of the presidency indefintely, and it's wider constituency believes their party can hoild on to that office from now on.

That doesn't mean terror isn't an issue. That doesn't mean there aren't terrorists. That doesn't mean the use of the military may not be legitimate. It DOES mean that we shouldn't be cowed into giving our government massive leeway for an undefined war. We have been in wars where we didn't know if we would win. We have been in wars we did not know the duration of. We have never been in a war where we had no idea what winning would be and no one would talk about it.

War on poverty? No one argued for war powers. War on drugs? No one argued for war powers. No one thought they were wars in anything but a rhetorical sense. There is an Iraq war. It could one day be 'won'. Does anyone think the war on terror is analagous?