At 03:25 PM 9/30/2001 -0700, Karsten M. Self wrote:
One of the most asinine arguments I've heard to date was a commentator on the BBC/PRI "The World" radio program a couple of weeks back. Her statement was that by calling this "a war", the US was validating the deaths at the WTC/P5 attacks as casualties of war.
Bollox.
Deaths aren't justified or not. What declaring war (formally or otherwise) does is put both combatents and other parties on notice (as the US was most decidedly not prior to the attacks) that there is a state of armed hostilities. Actions supportive of the (admittedly ill defined) enemy may be construed as acts of war against the US. And innocents are best advised to stay out of the hot zone.
This is IMHO naive. Have you ever been in a brawl? Unlike most silver screen fights my experience is that the first person to get in a good one usually decks the opponent and its over. If the first one to throw the punch can sneak up on the opponent or create over confidence in the other party by getting them to think that no violent reply will be forthcoming if attacked (in New York we called that "sucker punching") then the odds of success are that much more increased. "The Art of War" is still a good source of combat advice. steve