of wars and "wars"

by chance i caught the end of flight 93 on the history channel. an image of the first collapsing tower brought back the emotions of that day, reminding me how i felt we were under attack and it was an act of war.

before then, terrorists were viewed and treated as criminals, tho we knew they wanted to be seen as warriors.

for a time, i thought our leaders might've been right to switch from a law-enforcement model to a military one, but now i see i was wrong.

terrorists are vicious mass murderers. al qaeda—however big, well-organized, skilled in martial methods and strategies, or desiring to conquer and set up a new caliphate—is a gang of killers, not a nation or an army. seeing ourselves as at war with them makes some folk willing to support them and makes it too easy to get misdirected into real wars.

"war on terror" should not be literal but metaphorical, like "war on poverty" or "war on crime."

treating suspected terrorists as accused criminals rather than "enemy combatants" would eliminate all the fuss and confusion over warrants, wiretaps, tracking finances, detention, torture, right to counsel, court and prison jurisdiction, habeus corpus, due process, geneva conventions, and more.

the armed forces and spy agencies could still engage in the fight, but their roles would be clarified as adjuncts of law enforcement in the pursuit of justice.

and we could stop worrying about wartime passions and patriotism and presidential powers, and stop fighting each other, and just get on with the business of hunting and catching killers.