This article was written in 1996 by a "distinguished fellow" of the right-wing Claremont Institute in apparent response to the dilemma of wanting to declare all-out war against terrorists, instead of dealing with identified terrorists as international criminals, but not being able to identify a particular nation whom we can declare war.


It therefore identifies America's "larger enemy" as "the Nation of Terrorism." What is this "nation?" It is "a chain of bases, training camps, safe houses, and other facilities that dot portions of the map of the world, going into and out of other sovereign states."


Note the curious concept of "training camps" and "other facilities" that go "into and out of other sovereign states." The writer clearly realizes that he cannot say: "I know there are terrorist training camps located in country X which we should bomb." This realization is consistent with the advice President Bush reportedly received from his military commanders on Tuesday when he asked for a list of immediate targets, and was told that there weren't any, as well as President Clinton's bombing of the pharmaceutical plan in the Sudan that from all available accounts had no connection to terrorism or Bin Laden or anything else other than being in a Muslim country too weak to fight back. But since the distinguished fellow is dishing this up for people who like to think that there's something so elaborately evil that it requires all-out war, he has to equivocate by pretending to refer to specific infrastructure while effectively calling for a less discriminate response.


Some glimmer about just how indiscriminate comes in another curious point. He writes that it is "irrelevant if an individual group responsible for a particular attack is called ‘The Movement for Islamic Change' or ‘The Tigers of the Gulf' or some other name." No doubt true, by why does he mention it? Has anyone ever suggested that we should refrain from attacking terrorist groups because of their name? Of course they haven't, not ever.


What he's more likely trying to tee up is a case for attacking a broad variety of groups of people, not things, that may or may not have any direct connection with terrorism or even politics, but might arguably have some connection with the incitement of terrorist acts. "The Movement for Islamic Change" certainly sounds like a likely candidate.


We're going to see a lot of this: forceful demands that we kill "terrorists" followed by the killing of whomever, mostly just folks in the wrong place and time, if history is any guide, followed up by more articles by other "distinguished fellows" contending that whomever we killed must have been whomever we were talking about killing, perhaps with a tear or two for the inevitable tragedy of "accidental" civilian deaths.