-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- "War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces of uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense ... the nation in wartime attains a uniformity of feeling, hierarchy of values culminating at the undisputed apex of the State ideal, which could not possibly be produced through any other agency than war ...." - --- from the first part of an essay titled "The State," left unfinished at Randolph Bourne's untimely death in 1918. <much deleted>

Let us say, then, that George W. Bush commences a war against Osama bin Laden, or even against the greater abstraction of "terrorism". What happens then? A state of war is a serious thing. States of war have routinely been used to justify censorship, the curtailing of civil liberties, and the repression of dissidents. States of war are also understood to require the opposition in the legislature to moderate its otherwise essential functions of criticism. Calls are issued to stand behind the political leadership and to display unity, with the implication that the enemy is watching and that failure to unite is tantamount to treason. These are not healthy conditions for a democracy; indeed, they are the opposite of democracy.

War in the old conception was temporary: the idea was explicitly that the state of war would end, and that the normal rules of democracy would resume once their conditions had been reestablished. Civil liberties and the institutions of democratic government are not entirely eliminated during wartime; rather, they are reduced in their scope while retaining their same overall form. Even in conditions of total war mobilization, clear boundaries between the military and civilian sides of society are maintained. But war, we are told, no longer works that way. No such boundaries are possible. It follows, therefore, that "war" in the new sense -- war with no beginning or end, no front and rear, and no distinction between military and civilian -- is incompatible with democracy, and not just in practice, not just temporarily, but permanently and conceptually. If we conceptualize war the way the defense intellectuals suggest, then to declare war is to destroy the conditions of democracy. War, in this new sense, can never be justified.

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