'Terror' Is the Enemy

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/14/opinion/14bobbitt.html

- Hide quoted text -

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine <levinebar@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 4:33 PM
Subject: 'Terror' Is the Enemy
To: letters@nytimes.com


To the Editor:
 The "war" paradigm is unhelpful in our struggle against terrorism,
not least because there can be neither armistice nor peace treaty. The
duration is therefore undefined. POWs who could be detained "for the
duration" of a conventional war are doomed to lifetime incarceration
in a "war on terror"--without charges, without trials and without
appeal. Likewise, the extraordinary powers that the President claims
in times of war have no expiration date when there can be no armistice
and no peace. A responsible president would have emerged from attacks
of September 2001 as the leader of an international coalition to
apprehend and eliminate a criminal band who threatened the governments
of Saudi Arabia and Iran as much as that of the United States.
Instead, president Bush--eager to claim wartime powers--called for
"crusade". It will take a lot of work to accomplish now what could
have been done in 2002. The lives lost can never be replaced.
Barry Levine