Yes There Is A War On Terror

I saw this post at Vox Nova. See A Couple Thoughts on the “War on Terror”.

A couple of thoughts here. First there is a war on Terror and yes Freedom was attacked. I have to think taking Airliners full of people and using them as weapons is attacking Freedom in a very basic way.

There is a general "rant" on torture. A complicated subject because one must of course define what "torture" is. However there is another dangerous fallacy here for those that oppose torture.

"The American right seriously needs to get a pair. Begging the government to torture people who frighten you doesn’t make you a tough, clear-eyed realist; it makes you a bed-wetting, sniveling coward who dishonors every brave American who fought to obliterate and bring to justice Hitler’s torture brigades and the rapists of Nanking."

It is very easy I guess to put everything inot categories of left and right. If you truly oppose torture then one needs to realize that those that support "torture" or forms of enhanced intterogation that may or might not be torture are not just on the right. Until you reach out to that vast middle and engage them in a respectable conversation you get nowhere.

Finally this

Bush’s War on Terror was and is a huge mistake, and needs to be declared null and void. Responding to the attacks of September 11th as if they were an act of war, and not a criminal act, is giving Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden precisely what they want; legitimacy as “holy warriors” when they only deserve infamy as brutal criminals. They need to be opposed with skilled international policing, not a big, stupid, endless “war.”.

Of course this is really not Bush's war on terror or now Obama's war on terror it is America's war on terror which is backed by a good many people on all sides. I am not seeing a ton of elected Democrat officials telling Obama to stop the very successful Drone war against terrorist in Pakistan. I am not seeing a lot of elected Democrats that want the military to stop special forces operation elsewhere.

What is a international policing operation? Do we expect the FBI and Interpol to go in Pakistan and Somalia and arrest people? How exactly pray tell would that be done?

Yes these are criminals but so on many was was Hitler. I am afraid even J Edgar Hoover could not have used his G Men to stop that crew.