We are engaged in a global war

LONDON, Ont. -- The terrorist bombings during the past two weeks in Jakarta, Baghdad and Jerusalem, and the increasingly visible activity of al-Qaida and Taliban fanatics in Afghanistan, are indicators of one undeniable fact: we are being engaged in a global war of an entirely new type for which the past offers little guidance.

We might say that five summers ago this month, when terrorists engaged in bombing American embassies in east Africa, we should have awakened to this fact. Or, we might say, the first bombing of the World Trade Center in New York five years earlier, in 1993, should have been our wake-up call.

We can go back further, for this war has been long in incubation and has crept upon us even as our politicians, their advisers and others were unaware and unprepared to comprehend the mutation of religious fundamentalism in the Arab-Muslim world into a variant of fascism with global ambitions.

All previous wars, conventional or unconventional, were fought between or among states. The enemy was geographically located within clearly demarcated boundaries, and even when conflicts spilled over international frontiers to involve several states, as in the war in Vietnam, belligerents negotiated and wars eventually were terminated by states involved.

Today's war against international terrorism has none of the features of the inter-state wars of the past.

The enemy may have a face - Osama bin Laden's face on posters serves the minimal purpose of identifying the enemy - but it is hydra-headed and not located in any one state. It does not possess authority in any state. It recognizes no diplomatic niceties and conventions. It is not bound by any rules of engagement. It is contemptuous of international law and the values of our open society.

Moreover, this enemy exploits our political sensibilities and mocks our democratic virtues that recognize limits of what is permissible and appropriate even when we are engaged in defending fundamental rights enshrined in institutions - such as the United Nations - of our making.

In the bombing of the UN offices in Baghdad on Tuesday, the terrorists sent us an unmistakable message of their ambition. They want to drive us out of lands they claim for themselves, and purge them of our civilization's values.

Let us be clear about who "we" are. "We" are a people who share together, irrespective of our faiths and ethnicities, the values at the core of our modern civilization, global in appeal, that make for a society based on the rule of law, a government based on consent of the governed and the protection of individual rights and freedoms.

The German Nazis and Italian fascists appealed to a mythologized past, manipulated the real misery and fears of common people, sowed widely their racist doctrine of anti-Semitism, railed against injustices of democracy and built totalitarian dictatorships before launching wars against the values of the modern world.

When all of this was happening in full glare of public knowledge, governments in Britain and France during the interwar years led by parties of the liberal-left, and intellectuals of the same persuasion, engaged in a policy of conciliating the enemies of democracy. This policy, known as appeasement, continued right to the moment when Adolf Hitler was no longer an imminent threat, in our contemporary parlance, but ready to devour all of Europe.

Liberal democracies are always slow in waking up to perils such as those we are now facing.

The members of the lib-left political class, certain of their own virtues and ideological convictions - built on the notion of an inexorable progress of humankind while remaining contemptuous of the idea of evil as real - are generally preoccupied in faulting the vices of their own societies as impediments in the grand march of human history.

Hence, they fail to see the wolves when they emerge from the dark ready to pounce upon them and the rest of us.

We are unmistakably in a global war, and the sooner we realize this, the more effective we can be in defeating an enemy more insidious than any in the past.

An open society, like ours, cannot survive in this environment without some BIG changes. There is absolutly no reason why we cannot suspend certain rights until this scourge is over - be it 10 or 20 years.

Oh really! Exactly what right's are you referring to here? Blackbird.

There is absolutly no reason why we cannot suspend certain rights until this scourge is over - be it 10 or 20 years.

Exactly what right's are you referring to here?

I think that would be my question also.

The members of the lib-left political class, certain of their own virtues and ideological convictions - built on the notion of an inexorable progress of humankind while remaining contemptuous of the idea of evil as real

If he's making this claim (true today) about the governing parties in post WW1 europe, I think he's wrong. WW1 shattered any notion of inexorable human progress, and absolutely woke people up to the idea of evil as real.

As you point out, I may be naive in thinking that they actually do have in their hearts the best interests of nation. I don't even wish to consider if they don't; it's rather frightening.

Well, I hope you are right. They certainly are playing politics with the security of the nation. I think many Americans are finally figuring out that the Demon Cats cannot be trusted with national security.

Any established right that will aid our goverment in the rapid location and apprehension of terrorists. A broad brush, but one cannot fight an unconventional war with conventional tactics. The idea is to prevent the act before it happens. After all, these bums have found our Achilles heel, an open society loaded with plump civilian targets and an abundence of lawyers willing to tie up the courts indefinately. Unless we are prepared to accept unending attacks, we just don't have time to follow the rule book.

This is of course, one persons opinion and I am open to alternative solutions.

Well, you certainly have the right to entertain John Ashcroft in your house, invited or otherwise, you have no right to invite him into mine. Despite what these fool's espouse about our open society being our achilles heel, it's not. If you believe that, we've already lost. If the idea truely is to prevent the act before it happens, then why are our border's wide open, ssssssstilll? The one thing these duffus' are required to do by the Constitution, and they are still failing miserably. There would be no threat of unending attack's, if they would simply do their job, it's more productive for them to keep the "Fear Factor" ratcheted up! They don't mind telling us how they've foiled literally hundred's of attacks since 9/11, I say prove you've stopped one to the Public, just one! All we get is, Trust us we're from the Gubermint. No thanks, I'll keep my Freedom! Blackbird.

Unless we are prepared to accept unending attacks, we just don't have time to follow the rule book.

Whether we are prepared, or not, we face unending attacks.
Do you really believe that once a right, or liberty, has been taken away by the government, any type of government, the government is going to give it back without a fight? If you do, you haven't read a whole lot about governments in the past.

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." Benjamin Franklin
The quote is as valid today as it was then.

The boarder problem exists because inept and/or gutless politicians, on both sides, will not act. Do you have alternative solutions to in-country terrorist activity, beside belittling John Ashcroft?

Do you have alternative solutions to in-country terrorist activity, beside belittling John Ashcroft?

I don't belittle Ashcroft. He has a hard job.
IMO, he's going about it in the wrong way. Taking more rights and liberties from citizens is not the way to stop terrorism. What is the oath of office for the Attorney General? Doesn't it have something in it about supporting the Constitution of the United Staes?

The DOJ also has control over the INS so why doesn't the DOJ do something about the porous borders other than prosecute citizens that stop illegals from entering the country?

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