I appreciate the politeness, McGrath.

My feeling is that, unlike the "war on drugs," this is a real war, with real planes, ships, bombs, guns, soldiers, and battles. Like other modern wars, it will not be fought only on the battlefield, and in fact non-military engagements may constitute a substantially larger element of this one. But I DO want my country and others to view this as a war, with all that implies. One of my biggest fears is that the shock of September 11th will wear off before we make any headway with this, and gradually it will lapse into an uneasy stalemate like those that exist in other theaters -- the Palestinean/Israeli conflict, Northern Ireland, etc. Not war, not peace. I would prefer that we use terminology that is appropriate to a sustained, determined, and violent conflict, so there is no misunderstanding about our intentions.

I strongly disagree with those who feel that we should be pursuing this on other than a war footing. As I probably said before (in this thread or another; one loses track), I believe it is wise to look for the root causes of people's frustrations throughout the world, and to the extent the US exacerbates their suffering, we should find ways to change our behavior (however, not all suffering in the world should be presumed to be caused by the US). But the terrorist attack on September 11th was out of bounds, as are other terrorist attacks that have been launched at the US and other countries. In my view the people who did this have to be defeated, and decisively; then we can continue to look for ways to improve matters. We may even go so far as to launch a "Marshall Plan" in Afghanistan after hostilities cease. But just like Nazi Germany, we have to beat them first.