Are We At War?

[mburbank]

After reading the transcript of the Meet the Press /W interview, I've come to the conclusion this is a fundamental question.

What does 'The War against Terror" mean?

Is it

A.) a War as we have known wars, both declared and undeclared, ie. World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War, The Korean War.
B.) A rhetorical war, such as "The War on Drugs" or the "War on Poverty"
C.) Some utterly new and as yet not fully defined phenomenon?

Personally, I'd go with C. he problem as I see it is that here hs been no national discussion of this issue at all. It's a problem, becuase accepting C would mean we ought to work on deffining what this 'war' is, and that' something we are agressively not doing. W. isn't doing it because it wouldn't serve him in any way to do such a thing. The Dems aren't doing it because it would commit them to a speciffic stance which they would then have to defend. The far left isn't doing it because it could mean an acceptance of some of the aspects of conventional war.

I'd argue it's obviosuly not A. We went to war in Afghanistan, we went to War in iraq, in conventional senses. Those wars ended when the governments fell, and I suppose you could argue that the ongoing death and combat in both places is a legitimate part of the aftermath of a conventional war. But both conflicts fall under the unbrella of a much more amorphous war on terror. This war targets no army, no state, no soldiers, has no theater and no one has done any work on how you might know when and if this 'war' was over, if ever.

It isn't because of the two conventional conflicts it's included and because of all the special 'war' powers the executive branch has accrued. To date, special war powers have always been expected to expire when you beat the enemy. We're not sure who the enemy is, and we have no way of being certain when we've beat them and since we don't talk about these things, you can't really call these powers 'special'. The careful system of checks and balances is being eroded, possibly permanently. This is a slippery slope.

W. wants it both ways. In terms of speciffic goals and an idea of what progress we've made and when this war might be over or what we might do to end it, it's rhetorical. A shadowy war against shadowy enemies. In terms of his decisions and his culpability for them, he's a war time president. In terms of taxes it's once more rhetorical. It's not even an official part of the budget, we don't need to pull together as a nation and make a collective financial sacrafice for the greater good.

Who ever gets elected, we'll start right where we are right now. We are deeply commited to whatever this thing is. I think it shows great cowardice on the parts of all concerned that this is not a matter of key importance. I say cowardice because it is a matter of mutual convenience that this debate is not happening. I think it's a disservice to the American people and the world which will be judged harshly by history.