Whom are we fighting?

To those Americans (in particular) who believe their country is fighting a war against terrorism, Stephen Monsma, of Pepperdine University, begs to differ in this week's Capital Commentary, "Terrorism is Not the Enemy." The foe is al Qaeda, and not terrorism per se. Reasons Monsma:

The reason why this distinction is crucial is that a "war against terrorism" is inevitably an unlimited, open-ended war. A Christian understanding of evil in this broken, sinful world leads one to expect that terrorism in one form or another will always be with us. We have no reason to expect that in this present age there will not always be certain evil persons or movements who are willing to use the tactics of terror to gain their ends. To think that we can rid our world of terror is supported neither by historical experience nor Christian thought.

Thus by committing ourselves to a "war against terrorism" we are committing ourselves to something with amorphous, ill-defined aims, which in turn means there will be few benchmarks to judge successes and failures or even standards by which to judge the appropriateness of our actions and tactics.

On the other hand, if we would identify the Al Qaeda network and its allied groups as the enemy with whom we are in conflict, we would limit and focus our aims. This, in turn, would make it easier to hold our decision-makers accountable this election year, since we could judge the appropriateness and outcomes of the actions to which they commit our military and intelligence forces in the light of those more limited, focused aims.