(9/21/01) The foul deeds are done. The crucial question now is how the United States will respond. To anticipate and evaluate that, one needs a conceptual framework. Let us turn to textbook material on terrorism.

Terrorism implies:

• Access

• Competence

• Purpose

Purpose itself involves three components:

• To show that the government is incapable of protecting you

• To evoke an extreme response

• To use that extreme response as a recruitment tool for the dissident movement.

Whoever the malefactors are, they had access. They surely had competence. From a strictly technical point of view it was a brilliant operation that took a great deal of imagination, planning, coordination, and training. They are capable of similar dramatic, and perhaps equally unexpected actions.

The response from The White House and the Congress from a political point of view is almost inevitable; i.e., the celebrations of our stamina, fortitude, and ability to recover, our unflinching acceptance of this worst blow and our imminent rapid recovery. Complementing those strengths is the promise to wreak vengeance.

Going beyond that in time, everything becomes questionable. First, for the President to declare this is a war on terrorism is at best a misleading metaphor. Only the U.S. Congress has the Constitutional right to declare war. The war mentality promoted by the White House cannot help to frame deliberative policies, plans, and actions. As a metaphor, it stinks. When you look at the recent wars we have fought-the war on crime, the war on drugs, and the war on poverty-everyone of them has failed. The newly announced metaphorical war is also likely to fail for the same reasons. The haste to get on with remedies squeezes out the time to understand the situation and the choices and to select effective actions.

Another Texan received nearly unlimited military powers to act. The result was that his ineffective actions worsened the situation. Rather than fundamentally change strategies, he threw more and more physical power into the fray. Misdirected unlimited power is almost impossible to be corrected or redirected by a political leader. The result was ignominious defeat in Vietnam and the personal failure of President Johnson to fulfill his potential as one of our great domestic leaders. Texans need not be rash, impetuous cowboys, but there is that risk.

Second, rousing up the military surely has some short term value. We may need the National Guard to be sure that airports and other facilities are not part of an immediate further wave of assaults. But the announcement to the troops to get ready for action implies that we need many more men under arms and ready to move into the field, which is at best questionable and at worst portends hasty actions.

Assuming for the moment that the unproven but highly likely case against bin Laden is solid, what actions could be taken? Recognize that the U.S. military, after the galling defeat in Vietnam, adopted what amounts to an iron-clad explanation that we lost because it took too long, casualties were too high, and they lost public support. These lynchpins of present strategies failed in the recent case of Iraq. We got in quickly, took few casualties, and got out while the public was still enthusiastic. Look what that has done for us, nothing. Sadam Hussein, if anything, is in a better position than he was before we "defeated him."

What that incorrect and self-serving three-fold military model for action means now is that rather than put troops into mortal danger, we will use technology. It is over and over made clear that military technology is almost without exception grossly overused and causes large numbers of dead or maimed civilians, euphemistically called collateral damage. Most civilians are fully innocent of the acts to be punished. Speed is certainly not something to be desired when one doesn't know what directions and actions to take. As far as losing the public, it is extremely unlikely that the acts perpetrated on September 11th will be lost to the public for at least a generation. Time is on our side.

Third, the President reaches out to world leadership with a combination of cajolery and threats. That means that when we get hit hard enough, we suddenly become internationalist. What's the price that they will extract from us, and rightly should extract from us, to cooperate in areas where we had decided in our contempt for international cooperation to go it alone, to fail to sign treaties, to fail to live up to obligations, and to walk away from hard-won international measures. The Bush Administration is only eight months old. Our President came into office with nearly universal acknowledgment that he was an innocent with regards to international affairs. He has surrounded himself with experts almost all of whom in national security are cold warriors Cold warriors are likely to romanticize the past and see high technology as the answer to our problem, and immediate intervention and intensive overwhelming power as the route to that answer.

Perhaps a better solution is to call on the United Nations or the World Court to try bin Laden, even in absentia, assuming he is the malefactor. Conviction of him and all his associates, both named and unnamed, would make them international criminals. We could apprehend them more easily if they had no place to hide. With regard to their money and arms, what do we understand about the flow of money and the financing of these operations? Perhaps we could choke off the neck of bin Laden's purse.

The White House call for preparations for immediate actions is nonsensical. There is no obvious place for that action to occur. Sending ground troops to Afghanistan is to ignore the German experience in World War II in the Balkans, the recent European intervention experience on a more modest scale in the Balkans, and the overwhelming defeat of the Russians after a decade in Afghanistan. That was their Vietnam, in spades.

The thought of a public and political okay of assassination shows the most juvenile failure to look ahead at consequences. Okaying assassination could put every leader of the free world, including our legislators and our President, the Cabinet Members, and the other chief officials at risk. That game cannot be played unsymmetricly. Whatever we do can justify similar actions by others in the future. The Kantian Injunction applies to public, as well, as private life.

Fourth, considering the horrors on September 11th it is easy to demonize whoever did it. On the other hand recognize that throughout modem history, many cases of unacceptable actions became acceptable because the victors declared it as such. The fundamental ambiguities over what terrorism is and what is acceptable and what is not in conflict is muddy. The UN still has no clear definition of terrorism. Russia, China, and others in the Middle East and Africa would welcome a broad global condemnation of terrorism led by the United States, as long as they could deal with it in terms of a loose definition. That looseness backed by international collective abstract definitional support could justify whatever action happens to suit their immediate national or regional needs. Put more pointedly, it would allow them to beat the hell out of whomever they happen to be at odds with, within their own boundaries.

Fifth, why across some fifty primarily Muslim countries, is there a weak to strong anti-Western and anti-American movement? We must understand and respond positively to that pattern of hostility and integrate that new understanding into our nation's policies and plans. That will take thought and time.

Iran many be the key case. We have failed to understand and come to a more positive policy. We supported the Shah in his Westernization of Iran. A few Iranians became wealthy under the plan, but the mass of Iranians got nothing but a chronic affront to their deeply held religious and cultural commitments. Our so-called leadership must learn why so many people in so many places hate us, and then respond intelligently to that new insight.

There's always time to act. Let us take the time to deliberate.

Post-script: The President's message and actions in recent weeks surely look like the portend of the second and third purposes (above) of terrorism. Let us hope I am wrong.

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