Ghosts of the Past
                           18 September 2001

The present crisis has not been recognized as a fundamentally new and
different situation both by those calling for military action and the
pacifist minority.

The former see the situation in the light of Pearl Harbor.  That attack
was launched by an identifiable nation-state.  Last week's attack was not.
The most culpable state currently identified -- Afghanistan -- is not
really a state at all, being in a state of civil war.  What national
government exists have been accused of _harboring_ those responsible;
a sin of omission rather than commission.

The pacifists are chiefly veterans of the campaign against the Vietnam
War and other imperialist misadventures.  But there is room here for
military action that falls within the scope of self-defense; unlike in
all the other foreign deployments they so rightly criticize, we _were_
attacked this time.

The non-pacifists being in the majority, especially in the government,
war is what we'll get.  Well, not quite.  Not only is there the
murkiness of a "war against terrorism", recall that no nation-state is
is as culpable of last week's atrocities as Japan was of Pearl Harbor.
Not many people are saying it, perhaps not even consciously admitting
it to themselves, but practically everyone believes it at least
subconsciously.  Therefore there will not be support for the high cost
of giving, say, Afghanistan, the same treatment that Japan and Germany
got.

Myself, I'm beginning to see a limited police action (identify and
apprehend those responsible for last week's attacks) as workable.  Even
Iran has come out and basically said that would be OK.  That's an indicator
that perhaps an international consensus can be formed in favor of it,
thus minimizing the chance of a big blowup leading to an all-out war
between the West and the Islamic world.

The warhawks, of course, will want to throw a measure of retaliation
into it, and I fear they will prevail.  As several editorials on
_The_American_Prospect_'s web site have opined, it's our difficult job
to resist those urges; if we don't, we've basically admitted we're not
a whole lot better than they are.