Fblog Of War

So there's this blog, by law professor Ann Althouse, and I chirped up after Bush's 9/11 address to the nation. If you go to her post and reader comments, and type "shimmy" into your FIND function (rosetta-f), you can get each of mine and the responses. Anyway, I was a little dissatisfied with my presentation, but perhaps part of that comes from the somewhat hostile environment. Anyways, I'm reprinting what I just wrote tonight, because I do like it:


I'd like to say a bit more about law-enforcement vs. war. I think we all agree that part of civil law enforcement is a certain amount of "failure." Not ideal, it's just reality. Politically, I'm not convinced declaring war on bin Laden's mafia was ever a good idea. I mean, who looks strong there? Mightn't radical fairly-local small-timers race to provoke us and join that list?

Once 9/11 happened, folks were ready to accept war. And apparently lots of it. War can work, sure. But I've never been convinced that basically declaring a generation-long war is the best way to neutralize the radical movement, or prevent an attack much worse than 9/11. (It could work, sure.)

Perhaps I'm taking the Bushies' war-rhetoric too literally, or selectively. Certainly I'm not trying to anger anyone with pacifism.

Neither am I nit-picking simply because things aren't going well, or going "as well as we were told they would." That's transient stuff, and somewhat unknowable by me. What I do know is my own level opinion of the Bush administration's background, temperament, approach, and competence. I'm far from infallible in these assessments, but not to act on my own assessments would be negligence and abdication of citizenhood.

I saw some value in the Afghanistan invasion, because not to show strength like that would have possibly invited another attack. Perhaps a larger one. (We also could have done other somehow-forceful and surprising things, I'm sure.) Once Bush started talking about a generation long war, and it's not a stretch to think he means straight-up war, I began to really, really worry. Some bombs, some trucks, a boat, and some box-cutters got America to declare a generation-long war against a vague, amorphous, regenerative, and vaguely phantom enemy. Fantastic. That's kind of out-of-control stuff.

There's no way to know exactly what will come from war. I feel like, having done what we "had to do" in Afghanistan, we are now actively inviting another, bigger attack on us. Probably we'll avoid that.

I'm not fully ready to take that risk, that war-path, but it's not up to me, much. I believe in civil law enforcement because, while it is not fully safe, it is generally safer than war, on balance. The risk/benefit analysis, to me, plays out better than the one for war. Your opinion may differ. Bless you. Luckily, none of us are in charge!

There are many argume--, er, discussion-points I'd love to touch on from this. For one thing, the notion of law-enforcement really needs to be twinned with pretty brilliant positive political action, which I believe this country can, in fact, produce. Call me a patriot. Sadly, the Bushies seem to be incapable of delivering this most valuable element. So perhaps once we were stuck with Bush+Osama we were simply stuck with the start of a generation-long war.

[I'll leave out the closing cuss-word] that.