"Hey, you broke it, you bought it". I'm sure that's a popular phrase around international circles.

And how is this like war? What countries are supporting Al Qaeda? Do you think we should invade Syria now? I mean, really! What possible use is the "war" paradigm? If you would be so kind, explain to me how this is better than international police efforts?

We just had a war where there were no WMDs, no Al Qaeda connections. One or two aging Palestinian terrorists were all we got!

Now we have Our Own Private Palestinetm thanks to this incredibly brilliant action. We're on the verge of bugging out while leaving a regime we scrawled on a napkin in crayon.

Oh yes, the "war paradigm" has worked so very, very well...

Note, I'm not trying to be sarcastic towards you, personally. It's the position that this war did more good for us than bad that I hold in disdain. The 300,000 mass graves of the Iraqis shows how good it was for the Iraqis, and I'm glad for them. But Saddam is still free and the administration is planning to bug out. If he comes back into power, the Iraqis are going to be up sh*t creek without the proverbial paddle.

And so we may well have managed to dig a far deeper hole than we would have by simply waiting 6 months for a war with a real coalition.

Or simply not doing anything at all, keeping up the existing sanctions (that even I didn't agree with).

So, big plus on the war on terror! We're bugging out, leaving power to a bunch of hand picked fools we're now growing tired of. With both Saddam and bin Laden waiting around in the wings to step in after we leave. And we just showed every other surrounding country how to survive our three week regime change time share plan.

Brilliant!

What's next in the giant Risk game plan?

John,

A few things:

1) Why do you say that the admin is about to "bug out"--on what do you base this?

2) When I spoke of the war paradigm, I wasn't speaking of Iraq, per se, but of the broader war on terror. Are you suggesting that the law enforcement paradigm works better? Not to be overly cutsey, but your arguments come across as do those of the Democratic candidates: criticism sans alternatives.

3) And the Palestine analogy is quite flawed.

4) And the war in Afghanistan clearly diminshed al Qaeda. So, indeed, there have been clear scores for the "war on terror".

5) The success or failure in Iraq will take years, no months, to assess, as victory with be the creation of a stable, secular, at least quasi-democratic state.

John-

Ask the doc to up your meds.

Steven,

1) Uh, the rapid, silly pushing up of Iraqi security force "training". The draw down of troops. The fact that even the NeoCons are getting really nervous believing it.

2) Uh, yea. Tell me why the "war paradigm" works better. Where's the enemy to shell? What happened in SA is not going to have a bunch of forces trample through and take the Al Qaeda base. It's going to be law enforcement and intelligence professionals going over the evidence and searching them out. There isn't any military operation here. Or perhaps you can enlighten me as to the military exercises going on in response to the bombings in SA.

3) True. The situation is worse. And they are almost exclusively targeting military targets (the red cross and the UN are exceptions). But the situation on the ground for the civilians is pretty similar.

4)Uh, sure. Initially. But now that the Taliban is coming back strong - heck, we're even trying to get them into the "Islamic republic of Afghanistan" (gotta love that one). And the fact that Al Qaeda is operating fairly well along the Pakistan Border. But let's not mix our metaphors. I have always thought that Afghanistan was justified. I was talking about Iraq. The invasion of which has done JACK for the WATtm.

5)Yea, keep dreaming. Hey, did you hear we may have shot one of the Iraqi governing council? Boy, that's going to go over well. And considering that - according to reports - only 8 of the 30 some odd members actually meet regularly, I'm sure that when we hand things over to them it'll go quite well. And, we also have the whole Turkey/Kurd thing to play out.

Yea, it'll take years. You're right about that.

But then again, things can descend into chaos quite quickly.

Paul: ES&D.

As to proof of #1, here's Über hawk Kristol on the subject.

The whole thing about the Talbian coming back--I grant they exist and operate, but really, can you state that they are in anywhere near the same condition they were in where they could allow al Qaeda to use the whole country as a base of operations? This is a radical difference.

I am a believer that the war metaphor is a really lousy way to run the fight against terrorism. A law enforcement metaphor, while not perfect, is better.

In a war, there are objectives and at least implied goals for winning. If the war is won, a defined enemy will be vanquished, land will be taken or reacquired, a government will be overthrown, something. In law enforcement, the goal is much less tangible. We don't expect to eliminate any problem, just make the consequences of performing an action very undesirable. And thus reducing the occurrences to as small as is reasonably possible. Terrorism is an example of something that can't be "won" outright. Just contained.

Law enforcement agencies by and large cooperate together. Not always, but the citizenry expects our disparate agencies to work together. There's an implied bond of togetherness. War doesn't have that implicit bonding of agencies. In war the agencies are countries with expected differences, any one of which at any time can choose not to help the other. Terrorism crosses international borders and requires cooperation to contain its spread.

Law enforcement is an "always present" condition. War is not. War changes the economic/social models of a country for some period of time that is outside the norm. Then the country returns to another set of models when the war is done. Law enforcement works within the existing structures to maintain them as-is whenever possible. Terrorism has been around for a long time. Organized terror has been around for less time, but probably won't go away. Therefore, maintaining the social/economic models for war is unreasonable for an indeterminate period of time.

Law-enforcement does not generally involve creating new governmental structures. As is generally the case, war necessitates the setting up of new governmental structures to replace the defeated. These are costly things to setup and maintain with unpredictable results. Terror isn't something that needs to be replaced, like a fallen goverment. It only needs to be removed, like illegal activity.

These are several reasons why a law-enforcement paradigm better fits our current situation.

Eric,

I concur that there are problems with the semantics. However, if one considers the Clinton administration's approach as one of a law enforcement approach (think: Somalia, the first WTC bombings, the attack on the Cole, the Khobar Towers and the Embassy bombings in Africa), it is difficult to look at that as success, as I think the successed of al Qaeda in those cases led to 911.

make that "successes"

By that argument, one could argue that Reagan's terrorist policies were a failure because of the 1983 Beruit bombings.

I would also counter that by saying that Israel's current strategy of "war" with the Palestinian terrorists isn't working either. Death tolls greater than 9/11. 4 years of increased terrorist bombings. Is Israel better off now? Hard to say, but their war isn't exactly convincing me that they're winning.