You assert that the only effective method of stopping these characters is to kill or imprison them prior to the fact. Is it at all plausible, in your eyes, to bring about some sort of systemic change whereby over time they don't exist, or are so isolated from a supporting society as to be ineffecitve agents of destruction? It seems that one of the chief dangers inherent in your prescriptions is the manufacture of yet more individuals willing to die for the sort of ideologies we are now battling. It becomes a feed-back loop, where the two forces are locked in a never-ending struggle. It may be that open-societies must accept a certain short-term increase in violent losses in order bring about a long-term solution. The real trick seems to be finding a long term strategy. But your post speaks more of a short-term tactic which fails to enable any strategic victory.

Does the basis for preventive war change just because deadlier weapons are more easily accessible?

Isn't the crime analogy inapt? If an act of terrorism is being compared to murder, and the sponsor to the murderer, then, no matter how horrific the act of terrorism planned, and no matter how certain you could be of its occurrence, you could never punish its threat to the extent you'd punish its performance; conspiracy to commit murder may carry a heavier maximum sentence than, say, conspiracy to defraud, but not one that would match homicide. Since the punishment for sponsoring a terrorist act is military action, the criminal analogy would specifically rule out such action, not support it, even if it applied "much more strongly."

The choice between ex ante and ex post controls (or, as J. S. Mill termed them, preventive and punitive controls) emerges in all sorts of regulatory settings, of course. Many murders take place as part of murder-suicides, so the perpetrator is beyond the reach of deterrence. (And other murderers might be beyong deterrence for other reasons.) In recent decades, the probability that a murderer in the US will be caught and convicted has declined significantly. All else equal, does the weakening of ex post controls make gun control, for instance, a more desirable policy than it was 40 years ago?

I don’t think the crime model maps onto international relations well. There is no social contract, no pre-set roles. The U.S., in starting a preventative war, is protecting its own interests. What if no one trusted the policeman and suspected him of pursuing raw self-interest, rather than fulfilling a role in the community? The policeman, not working within a mutually understood framework, would just be the most powerful individual in an anarchic society, enforcing his will. This would not be looked upon kindly by others. Likewise, looking at preventative war outside of the global environment ignores unintended consequences beyond the two nations at war.

The problem with the model is that formally, the United States and Iraq are coequals, not policeman and citizen. I don’t think this perspective has much practical value since U.S. power in fact underpins the international order and world interests are tied up with U.S. interests. I am not dogmatically opposed to preventative war either. But, if we’re going to stay practical what really matters are individual cases. You had better have a really strong case and the case had better be well articulated, and your actions ought to show deference to the notion that this is something exceptional, because as far as everyone else is concerned you’re not the police.

That all applies to states. Terrorists are a different situation where there are no adverse consequences to preventative/preemptive action, since they’re not legitimate actors on a world stage. In fact, here the policeman/criminal model applies very well; terrorists as criminals, states as doing the job of stopping them (note: this has nothing to do with “the War on Terrorism should be law enforcement!” etc, it’s an analogy). But, I think objections to pursuing terrorists preventatively are pretty rare.

"Critics of preventive wars and other preventive actions against rogue states and terrorist groups ignore these major changes in weaponry and their availability."

Who are you referring to with this statement? I don't think there are many critics of preventive wars as such. Indeed, as the Judge explains above, the line between "preventive war" and a purely self-defensive war is hard to draw. The paradigm preventive war -- Israel's six-day war with Egypt, Syria and Jordan -- is viewed by most serious scholars as a war of self-defense.

If you mean to criticize those who opposed the invasion of Iraq then I think the criticism is not only unfair, but dishonest. Those who opposed the Iraq war (at least those who had serious views on the subject) did not oppose the idea of preventive war as such. Rather, they did not support THIS so-called preventive war -- they believed that the President had not demonstrated that the threat was grave enough to commit to such a costly endeavor. I think it is hard to argue, in hindsight at least, that the opponents of Iraq were 100 percent right. (I unfortunately did support the Iraq war, because I believed, mistakenly, that the President had actually planned for the aftermath, and that the intelligence was as good as he said.)

If you mean to offer support for the Iraq war by arguing that mistakes will be made, and the costs of getting something wrong justify making mistakes then so be it. But I think it is quite dishonest to create a straw man -- people who oppose ALL preventive war -- and then destroy the straw man as a way of justifying the invasion of Iraq. If I misunderstood your point then I think you may want to expand on just which group you are referring to as always opposed to "preventive war."

Cincinnatus

Mr. Becker and others have attempted to justify preemptive war because the cost of a potential terrorist attack is much greater than in the past due to the increased destructiveness of the weapons available (chemical, biological, nuclear).

In light of this, I find it extremely curious that the largest terrorist attack ever commited on American soil was by a group of men with box-cutters. Although Mr. Becker may have a rhetorical bucket, it does not hold much empirical water.

Perhaps we should attack nations that house box-cutter factories? These have proven themselves much more dangerous than the million-and-one phantom fears that we attempt to protect ourselves against at a price tag of trillions of dollars.

I think the models are getting a little mixed here. There are two types of entities we're discussing here: rogue states which are the general target of pre-emptive war and extremist terrorist cells which are the specific target of pre-emptive war.

1. Rogue States: The crime control model does generally work in this context, as long as the state believes there is a superior force that will compel it to comply. Above all, regiemes believe in self-preservation. This is why Hussein would typically only open his country back up to inspectors at the barrel of a gun. But he would do it.
Gulf War II is, of course, an exception. But it is one of our own making. Thinking back to the buildup for the war, there was nothing Hussein could have done to avoid it. If we found weapons in Iraq, then Hussein was going to use them against the U.S. and we had to go to war. If we did not find weapons in Iraq, then Hussein wasn't acting in compliance with his UN obligations and we had to go to war. Iraq was a case at the outer bounds of the crime/control model, something akin to a recidivist, but it responded to external threats nontheless.

2. Extremist Terrorists: How do you use coercion against someone who plans to give up their life? You can't. Something has convinced these people to give up an uncertain future for a certain martyrdom. Once this conviction takes hold, there is little that can be done to talk these people down.
Any discussion on how to fight extremist terrorists must incorporate both a short-term and a long-term strategy. Short-term in capturing and/or killing those who have already decided to give up their life in a suicide attack; long-term in creating less people who make such a decision. I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said "We are making more terrorists than we can kill." I don't know if that's true, but I don't that it isn't, either.

-B

"Major changes in weaponry and their availability" is a factor that cuts both ways. Sure, it raises the cost of not intervening when intervention is appropriate. But it equally raises the cost of intervening badly or at the wrong time. Thus it's not clear to me that this factor should make us more rather than less inclined to intervene. It simply raises the stakes.

Given that government does very few things well, has incentive problems, has information problems, and just generally tends to make a lot of mistakes, I don't trust that giving government more lattitude to intervene pre-emptively is likely in practice to eliminate old terrorists faster than it inspires new ones.

If intervention tends to create a net increase in terrorists and terrorism, the fact that the new terrorists can be more effective at a lower cost today than in times past should lead us to favor fewer and smaller interventions than before.

I think that the most fundamental objection here is that if the "deterrence" model isn't working on us (ie; despite the threat of terror attacks, we aren't capitulating to the terrorists, withdrawing support for Israel, etc), then why do we think it's going to work on them?

You know, this is exactly the argument put forward by bin Laden et al for the 911 attack on the US.

Are the 2nd and 3rd posts mistitled or is Becker writing on the legal aspects of preventive war and Posner on the economic aspects? I would have expected each to be commenting in the area of his expertise, not vice versa. - Andis Kaulins

OK, I see my question is moot:
Update:
If one follows the Posner posting link to Optimal War and Jus Ad Bellum by Eric A. Posner and Alan O. Sykes (April 2004, U Chicago Law & Economics, Olin Working Paper No. 211, U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 63), then it would indeed appear that the economics-laden posting is Posner's writing and not Becker's and that Becker (who specifically refers to Posner's posting) is then the one writing about deterrence, but it still seems strange to this writer that Becker and not Posner is writing on deterrence and Posner is writing on the economics of preventive war.

"The problem with the model is that formally, the United States and Iraq are coequals, not policeman and citizen."

I can't fathom any dimension in which this is true. The US expresses foreign policy through a mechanism that approximates the will of the governed. The opposing entity is not Iraq, but a single man. Saddam's wants and needs are not remotely tied to those of under his heel. There is the power disparity. The existence of the despot at all is a violation of fundamental principles, and his claims on soveregnity are empty.

"I think that the most fundamental objection here is that if the "deterrence" model isn't working on us (ie; despite the threat of terror attacks, we aren't capitulating to the terrorists, withdrawing support for Israel, etc), then why do we think it's going to work on them?"

The terrorist doesn't believe the US is undeterrable, or he wouldn't bother engaging in the terrorist act in the first place. What the terrorist seeks is to erode the will to fight, knowing that he can not significantly impact the ability to fight. If the cost of dictating US policy were to be set at 4000 civilian lives, we would be in very bad shape.

On the other side, the martyr may himself be undeterrable, but that is not to say that his suppliers aren't deterred. Certainly, OBL is spending a lot of effort not to martyr himself, which seems to indicate that the terrorist leadership has a healthy sense of self preservation.

The short answer to why there is an expectation of asymmetry in deterrence is that terrorists are assumed to be doing everything they can do to cause damage while it is obvious to everyone even given current engagements that the US has not tapped a fraction of it's capability to harm fundamental Islam. There is asymmetry in capability to harm.

You shouldn't find it strange that Becker is writing about deterence given his seminal work on the economics of crime and deterence.

"Preventive" wars such as this one (which turn out not to have anything to prevent) can, it should be too obvious to have to say, also *increase* the likelihood of the very type of event they were supposed to *decrease* the likelihood of. The greater power of weapons thus can cut both ways when it comes to setting a threshold for "preventive" attacks.

Sorry, Glen Raphael, repeated your point there.

One difference between preventive war and arrests based on intent is that in the latter case, the impact of the action falls almost entirely on the arrestee. When one nation invades another preventively, the cost falls largely on the innocent civilian population of the invaded nation. This is true even if the invader does not actively desire civilian casualties and takes some steps to minimize them. And it ought to set the moral bar higher for preventive war than preventive arrest.

Another difference is that the power of preventive warmaking is very much more dangerous than the power of preventive arrest, as shown by the commonness of the abuse of that power. Virtually every major act of *aggressive* war in the modern era has been justified in preventive or preemptive terms. Even Hitler, upon invading Poland, made sure to gin up a story about Polish plans for aggression against Germany.

The reason for this is not hard to see. When arrests are made preventively by law enforcement personnel, they operate according to rules they did not make and they are accountable to an independent judiciary. Thus the temptation to abuse is somewhat checked. When nations arrogate to themselves the power to invade other nations on the basis of paranoid speculation about the indefinite future, there is no such accountability and no such check.

The US is better equipped to calculate the likelihood that other states/groups possess and are willing to use WMDs than maybe anyone else, but we still don't get it right every time. A danger (not one that should carry the argument every time, but a danger) in increasing the likelihood of preventive war is that others with less interest or ability in getting it right will avail themselves of a watered-down standard to wage war-- think Iran, or maybe even Russia.

This is a static analysis--it assumes that there is a limited number of terrorists out there, who exist and want to do harm to us independently of what we do. If too many "mistakes will be made," the ensuing resentment ensures that many more terrorists will be made.

I think a more interesting question, and one more likely to come into play in the next 20 years, is the response to attack. Most regimes in the Middle East are quite hard to understand. Many are no more than a collection of nepotistic ties. What happens if a large, spectacular attack, killing say 5,000 people, is tracked to an element in a regime but not necessarily to the top?

In Afghanistan the decision was easy. Bin Laden was tied very closely to the Taliban, and the Taliban didn’t present a very sympathetic defendant. More interesting will be if a spectacular anonymous attack is made in Tel Aviv, London, or New York. There is evidence linking the attackers to elements of the security apparatus of (Pakistan, Iran, Syria, North Korea, pick your favorite bogeyman). Will the country that was attacked be satisfied with El Presidente turning over his Brother-in-Law who runs the spy service? Or would the death of 5,000 people demand the destruction of the regime?

I’m not sure what would happen this case. Would a president/prime minister be able to survive accepting only a single person for trial in such a case? Could he survive invading a regime that is making at least some steps toward helping out after the fact?

My fear is this is the type of case that is most likely to be seen in the future. The closest parallel I can think of is the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. After tracing down lots of arrows pointing to Libya we were willing to accept a couple of intelligence agency goons for trial plus a monetary settlement for the victim’s families. That may be the precedent we have to live with.

It is quite remarkable that Bush’s argument for war can be regarded as the predatory imperialist aims outlined by the crypto-fascist Project for a New American Century. On the other hand, a minority of warmongers and apologists can be seen in the light of the apparent fabrications which lead to the end of any possibility of social justice in a reactionary state. Let us never forget that the pro-Sharon neoconservative cabal provides a pretext for an oil war masquerading as an endless crusade against "terrorism." Clearly, the influence of Leo Strauss is solid evidence of the flagrant lies promulgated by the political donor class.

Glenn Raphael,

"Major changes in weaponry and their availability" is a factor that cuts both ways. ... But it equally raises the cost of intervening badly or at the wrong time.

You start off fine, but the conclusion is quite off, because you (apparently) ignore the fact that the "major changes" aren't restricted only to putting greater destructive power into smaller and cheaper packages. At the same time this is happening, we are also getting smaller and more precise weapons, too. We certainly made good use of them in both Afghanistan and Iraq! I think it can be fairly said that they lower the cost of intervention since they make the potential for collateral damage so much smaller. (The ultimate in this regard is surely the British precision-guided bomb that contains no explosives, but only cement to give it some weight.) Whether you think lowering the cost of intervention is a feature or a bug is up to you...

The closest parallel I can think of is the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. After tracing down lots of arrows pointing to Libya we were willing to accept a couple of intelligence agency goons for trial plus a monetary settlement for the victim’s families. That may be the precedent we have to live with.

Why is that the precedent we have to live with? No Great Power can allow such an attack to go essentially unpunished in that manner, and remain great. Terrorists do not admit the existence of the rule of law in the way the West conceives it, they live in what is essentially a Hobbesian state of nature. The only use our own commitment to the rule of law as a weapon against us. A major attack traceable to any state (whether truly sanctioned or the part of a rogue element in the state) must be met with immediate and overwhelming force, even national strategic means.

It's curious, and appropos given your reference to Lybia, the state that got off with a lick and a promise for an attack, was the first country to stare into the possibility that it was next and to renounce weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions don't work, and have never worked, from the Continental System to the Ethiopian Crisis to the many post-WWII sanction regimes. The credible threat of overwhelming force works. To remain credible, when the action the threat of force is intended to deter actually occurs, the force must be applied. You simply can't say, well, this time we'll only slap your wrist, but next time, we'll really go after you. Be sure if you try that, you will be tested, and as the amount of force threatened becomes greater, the threshold decision to use force becomes harder and harder. Indeed, the (legitimate) terror at the prospect of nuclear war has made the use of force decision unthinkable for millions of modern leftists.

It is interesting and telling how the probabilities of certain events are privileged in both analyses over those of others.

"Sanctions don't work, and have never worked, from the Continental System to the Ethiopian Crisis to the many post-WWII sanction regimes. The credible threat of overwhelming force works. To remain credible, when the action the threat of force is intended to deter actually occurs, the force must be applied. You simply can't say, well, this time we'll only slap your wrist, but next time, we'll really go after you."

I couldn't agree more.

"Dsquared" writes:

'I think that the most fundamental objection here is that if the "deterrence" model isn't working on us (ie; despite the threat of terror attacks, we aren't capitulating to the terrorists, withdrawing support for Israel, etc), then why do we think it's going to work on them?'

Why not? It worked on Spain, and on Libya. And if the abettors of terrorist activity were not so deterred, a preventative war removes from them the capability to abet terrorist activity in the first place.

I would argue that the United States is able to use force against "terrorists" and "rogue states" precisely because the weapons available to such groups are so limited. If Saddam Hussein the had had the capability to kill half the people in the United States then a "pre-emptive" war with Iraq would have been about as attractive as a "pre-emptive" war with the former Soviet Union.

With respect to the Middle East, there is a situation where people in the Middle East are afraid of having American values forced on them and people in the United States are afraid of having Middle Eastern values forced on them.

Because the United States is so dominent militarily Bush is able to impose a "solution" to this situation of forcing Western values on the Middle East: "democracy" (leadership that goes along with U.S. policies), "capitalism" (Middle Eastern oil controlled by U.S. corporations), "Israel" (resurrecting an ancient ethnic homeland that is a fundamental part of U.S. religious mythology), etc. If, however, anyone representing the Middle East had a weapon to match the United States then the solution would have to be a lot less one sided.

My reactions posted here:
http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2004/12/becker-late-than-never.html

Short version: I think Becker is mistaken about the elements for attempted murder (and other attempted crimes); intent alone is not sufficient. And I also think his argument for lower having a lower standard of proof for attempted violent crimes, as compared to less violent ones, fails unless he's also willing to reduce the standard of proof for *successful* violent crimes.

"Short version: I think Becker is mistaken about the elements for attempted murder (and other attempted crimes); intent alone is not sufficient."

Looking at this as a prosecution is a bit awkward, but it does bear remembering that we are dealing with a known criminal that we have heretofore decided was too expensive to prosecute. When environmental changes occur that raise the possibility that this known criminal could be a more substantial threat than was previously supposed, we reasonably recalculate the costs of inaction.

All dictators are known criminals in this context. They are known to employ aggressive force to suppress the liberties of their subjects. The question is not whether Saddam was guilty of a crime, it is whether or not we were to be the targets of his next one.

Kirk:
Becker explicitly referred to changes that increase the power and accessibility of weapons -- the much-hyped ability of non-state actors to build "WMDs" in a basement lab somewhere using money found under the couch cushions. You're correct that there are other changes in weapons technology that make the intervener's job easier, but I don't think those were the sort of changes Becker meant.

The only really effective approach is to stop them before they engage in their attacks. This is accomplished by tracking them down and imprisoning or killing them based on evidence that they intend to engage in suicidal attacks.

This is hard to believe. Kill people based on evidence that something is going to happen? This sounds simplistic and entirely barbaric. Mistakes will be made, and they'll raise the "cost", whatever it is, by untold factors. Even if no mistakes were made, this is simply wrong, morally. Bringing people to justice: yes. Killing: no.

dottering dingbats! on the next oprah!

Take a look at Professor David J. Luban's very interesting article, "Preventive War," in the new issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs. It can be downloaded free at www.ssrn.com in pdf format.

You write, "These suicide bombers clearly cannot be punished after they commit their acts (although their families could be) because they forfeit their lives while attempting to kill and injury others."

Indeed, what if it were to become known over a reasonably short period of time throughout the Middle East that the loved ones, maybe closest friends, too, of suicide bombers were being picked off with great regularity. Sometimes just one, sometimes two or three, sometimes a houseful at a time? Maybe after especially egregious terrorist attacks, an entire block or section of town from whence the terrorist came might be eliminated.

This is grisly business, certainly, but it imposes the essence of deterrence:

You kill our innocent civilians by means of stealth and subterfuge, and we will kill yours. You strap on a bomb or drive an explosives-laden vehicle at our people, there is a very high likelihood your beloved parent(s), sibling(s), spouse, friend(s) will pay with their lives.

So, jihadist, factor into your calculations of the cost of securing your place in paradise the lives of those you most care about, because you will be sacrificing not just your life, but theirs as well.

"In light of this, I find it extremely curious that the largest terrorist attack ever commited on American soil was by a group of men with box-cutters. "

Actually, they were armed with four jumbo jets (with the attendant jet fuel), which they used the box-cutters to acquire. If I were to toss a brick through the window of a gun store, thereby obtaining a shotgun which I then used to blow large holes in people who had incurred my ire, I wouldn't be prosecuted for 'brick crime.'

I have wondered for some time how tweaking international rewards for information leading to terrorists (or their plans) might factor into cost/benefit analysis/production function analysis of war in our modern age. Throwing 5 million at Osama's right hand will undoubtedly lead to no information. However, were he to take it, it would lead to some incredible information for capturing the terrorist. Nevertheless, the right hand man receives greater utility from being Osama's right hand man, or at least, from vehemently adhering to a certain ideology. As we get farther away from the terrorists, information from third parties becomes less comprehensive and likely less accurate. At the same time, these individuals are more likely to accept 5 million dollars (or any amount holding the amount for a right hand man to be equal) in return for that information. If we accept these premises, then there must be a value maximizing allocation of resources aimed at retreiving information. At one end, we might theoretically be able to pay an immense sum to a closely related individual to get highly valuable information. At the other end, we might get less reliable information from a more distant source but not have to pay as much.

What we do with this information might be used in various ways. It might be used for assasinations (if we chose to pursue them), or for macrostrategies. That is, information is an imput in the production of safety. This input costs. We might compare the marginal productivity of information to the marginal productivity of other inputs, such as tanks, AEGIS systems, Missile Defense Systems and determine the cost minimizing/value maximizing input mixture.

The premises are just that, premises. It may be unrealistic that an individual 3 persons removed from Osama is any more likely to accept a set amount of money. However, it seems likely that there is a correlation. These are just a few initial thoughts. Any thoughts?

OneL
Ann Arbor

Becker and Posner provide a compelling argument that preventive war may at times be optimal. Why then would the international community have restricted the use of preventive war in the past? The reason may be that it is hard for countries to commit to wage a preventive war only when it is actually a preventive war rather than an aggressive war. To avoid such an abuse of power, it can be worthwhile to place restrictions on the use of preventive force even if it comes at the cost of some preventive wars, which would otherwise be optimal, not being fought.

Combating crime mainly relies on deterrence through punishment of criminals who recognize that there is a chance of being apprehended and convicted.

Surely this is grossly oversimplified. For example, I think people very often don't commit crimes mostly because their friends and family will be disappointed in them and become contemptuous of them. That is, quite a lot of people don't commit crimes mostly because they don't want to become known as criminals to their social peers.

That would help explain why it's hard to deter crime that doesn't carry much of a social stigma, e.g. speeding. That would also help explain why, when standards of acceptable behaviour change, the newly proscribed behaviours tend to have started diminishing well before they were criminalized. (For example, drunk driving declined for more than a decade before the passage of laws reducing the maximum BAC to 0.08, increasing the drinking age, et cetera.)

Now, we can accept that individuals are driven by biological necessity to put intrinsic value on approval by their peer group (this being almost the definition of a social species). But it's pretty hard to see why any such reasoning should apply to nations. That is, there are major psychological influences on individuals that have no counterpart when it comes to nations.

This is an illustration of why I have grave doubts about the utility of Professor Becker's appeal to our understanding of criminal individuals in his attempt to explain the influence of US policy on criminal nations.

Simply put, Professor Becker asks us to extrapolate from the "micropsychology" of one man to the "macropsychology" of millions, and I think this is far too great a change of scale to be uncritically accepted.

I'm not saying Professor Becker's conclusions are wrong, but only that his arguments for them are unconvincing.

Indeed, what if it were to become known over a reasonably short period of time throughout the Middle East that the loved ones, maybe closest friends, too, of suicide bombers were being picked off with great regularity. Sometimes just one, sometimes two or three, sometimes a houseful at a time? Maybe after especially egregious terrorist attacks, an entire block or section of town from whence the terrorist came might be eliminated.

You may be surprised to discover that this tactic has been tried in Ireland, Africa and the Middle East, and the reason that it isn't used much today is that it didn't work.

becker's not very intelligent for a nobel prize winner...

in Newsweek, he assured us that the Iraq war would cost "at most $ 150 billion" and that was if terrorists blew up most of the oil fields in the middle east... In the same article, according to becker, liberals were against the war b/c we thought it was all about oil... ??? Actually, we were against it b/c none of the administration's rationale's were borne out by fact, and once you wiped them away, there wasn't much left. Saddam Hussein was a weak dictator afraid of the US. The only danger he posed to us was if we attacked him, in which case it was possible that thousands of Americans would die, and millions of Middle Eastern males would be more pissed off at the US, and thus more likely to become terrorists. Becker claimed in his Newsweek article that the reason the President was going after Hussein was b/c of Hussein's weapons. But Gary, honey, where is this evidence?

Becker claims liberals like me "ignore these changes in weaponry" that make preventative war more necessary now than, say, it was during the cold war. The Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons. What's more lethal than that?

THe nobel laureate sayeth: "It is already difficult to know which groups are responsible for terrorist acts except when they brag about them." Right, like 9/11, when Richard Clarke knew it was Osama the day of... Why didn't the Soviet Union terrorize us if it is so easy to get away with? Or Cuba? Or Hussein? Maybe it's because they were scared of retaliation. It seems like one can make a clear distinction between "rogue states" like Iraq, and terrorist organizations, like Al Qaeda, yet the nobel laureate clumps them all together as though he were Donald Rumsfeld.

does anyone know if there are any conservatives who aren't so easy to debunk?

Thank you both for creating such a wonderful blog. And thank you both for allowing plebeans such as myself to add comments -- very often "celebrity" blogs are onesided and I appreciate your willingness to create the open-ended dialogue that the Web in general, and weblogs specifically, encompass. (Now I anxiously await one of these mental giants actually to respond to the crazy ramblings left in the comments)

I am confused about the deterrence/safety dichotomy created in this post. Becker begins by talking about general deterrence in criminal law -- that rational actors do not commit criminal acts because the costs of getting caught outweigh the benefits of the criminal action. But then Becker notes that "In addition, individuals who cannot be deterred are sometimes punished simply because it is considered likely that will commit crimes in the future. This is a major justification for forced hospitalization and psychological treatment of potentially violent and mentally unstable persons."
It seems that Becker's argument is that the terrorists, in addition to being spread out and hard to find to retaliate against, are more like mental patients -- those who cannot be deterred. I agree that most terrorists today are not rational actors -- destroying their own lives in support of a cause is not rational in the economic sense.
We do not "punish" those who are committed -- we commit them because, due to a mental disease or defect, the present a danger to themselves or others. It is, indeed a protectory measure, which could be analogized to the protection of our country from terrorists through preemptive attack. And courts recognize that such actions are not punishment, because there is a lower standard of proof for civil commitment, different evidentiary standards, no jury trial right, etc.

But, those who are committed are not merely locked away forever, or "disposed of." They receive regular hearings for competency, due process, treatment (if possible), medication, and counseling. One determination cannot lock a person up forever. However, there are no such safeguards in preemptive war. An executive makes a decision about safety, and moves in. There is little (ex ante) oversight of this decision. Once there, the country bombs, shoots, and destroys. There is no way to reevaluate later. The "treatment" or "medication" might be the establishment of a democracy where some sort of dictatorship previously stood. But putting a new suit on an insane individual just allows the insane individual to get a table at Charlie Trotter's.
The point is that neither Becker's or Judge Posner's analysis can accurately measure all the consequences of preemtive war, and "committing" a country is not appropriate either.

Posner presents a quantitative (yang) analysis that makes the case that sometimes, preventive war is the rational chooice. Becker presents a qualitative (yin) analysis that makes the same point.

Most members of the reality-based community already understand that sometimes killing is rational. Most of us understand that sometimes, chopping off your arm is rational (e.g., Aron Ralston -the hiker who sawed his arm off when a rock fell on it and trapped him in a remote canyon).

The 200 billion dollar question is whether THIS preemptive war - the one that we are spending money and lives on TODAY is justified. Posner was mute with respect to this question. Becker tells us we gotta kill the terrorists before they kill us.

Neither Posner nor Becker nor Becker&Posner comes anywhere close to preventing a rational and compelling justification for Bush War II.

If their intention was to stimulate debate, great. If they think they've contributed anything to this debate, yikes.

An executive makes a decision about safety, and moves in. There is little (ex ante) oversight of this decision....There is no way to reevaluate later.

I don't think so. Recall that the executive in question is subject to oversight by the voters, e.g. as just happened this November 2. Furthermore, those voters are without doubt affected by the perceived efficacy and humanity of the operation.

Furthermore, as should be very obvious from the twists and turns of the Iraq or Vietnam story, war is not a one-time decision. It is a posture maintained for years, and there are many opportunities to change its nature, or re-evaluate the war decision altogether.

Mr. Becker, there doesn't seem to be any point to your essay, so allow me to highlight some of your fallacious propositions.

No, combating crime surely does not rely "on deterrence through punishment." It relies on moral training. Only in the rare instances where that fails must we resort to punishment. Have you heard about religion?

No, nobody is punished for committing crimes "in the future." Hospitalization and psychological treatment are not punishments in this country. Where are you from?

No, the conventional approach to war in democratic states does not favor "retaliation after attacks." The conventional approach in the US is to avoid attack by strong defense, negotiation, cultural and trade ties. Where are you from?

No, retaliation was not the rational for MAD. Deterrence was the rational. Are you able to detect the difference?

No, stopping terrorists before they attack by tracking them down and imprisoning them or killing them" in definitely not the "only really effective approach." Please pay attention to President Bush when he talks about the spreading Democracy as the best way to stop terrorism.

No, Saddam Hussein did not "greatly underestimate the likelihood of massive responses" after the whooping he got in Desert Storm. He is simply nuts. Do you ever pause to consider the simple explanation?

In summary, I think you need to find another topic to blog on. You have no idea of what you are talking about.

My problem with the argument and generally the problem I had with criminal law class in law school was that detterrence is ineffective. Our jails are fuller then ever before, and this now includes a record number of women. If we cannot deter violent and criminal behavior in the United States, where we have an entire justice system centralized around that goal how can we deter similar types of activities in foreign and rouge nations with the use of rotating military forces. However, I am for the preemptive strike against Iraq and our war against terror.
apparentauthority.blogs.com

Posner sees the issues far more clearly than Becker.

One reason I found the debate over Iraq so frustrating is that my friends on both sides of the issue overlooked the concept of cost/benefit analysis.

My prowar friends thought like Becker does: there are benefits to deposing Sadaam, therefore we should - overlooking the possible costs, most notably the likelihood that by creating increased anti-U.S. hostility in the Arab world, the war increased the pool of potential terrorists. (Of course, had Sadaam had WMDs, the costs would have been far higher: he might have given the WMDs to terrorists, causing them to be used in American cities).

My antiwar friends saw the costs of war, but did not see the benefits. It is not yet clear whether the ultimate rulers of Iraq will be better or worse (from a U.S. point of view) than Sadaam; a Taliban-type regime, at least in part of Iraq, is by no means impossible. But if Iraq evolves into a relatively decent state, or if Iraqis are too busy killing each other to attract the world's attention, post-Sadaam Iraq may be less harmful to America than the pre-2002 status quo.

However, it is clear that the sanctions regime was a major irritant in U.S.-Arab relations, and it may well be that after the U.S. withdraws, the memory of the Iraq war may be less harmful than the present reality of sanctions which (according to Arab propaganda) caused starvation, etc. in Iraq. (I express no opinion as to the truth of such propaganda, mainly because I have no idea).

On a wholly unrelated note, I reject the idea that terrorists are undeterrable just because they do not treasure their lives. Terrorists are fighting for a specific cause: threaten the extermination of that specific cause, and you deter them.

For example, suppose Israel was willing to plausibly threaten to commit genocide against the Palestinians- that is, to use its WMDs to make the West Bank and the Gaza Strip uninhabitable by human beings for the next few years. (And assume further, of course, that it was technically able to do so without killing most Israelis as well). If these conditions applied, and Ariel Sharon said "The next suicide bombing will lead to the elimination of the Palestinian people", terrorism would disappear because Palestinian terrorists want Palestinians to take over Israel rather than being eliminated.

Likewise, Putin could deter Chechen terrorism by threatening to eliminate Chechyna, and if Spain had nuclear weapons it could deter the ETA by threatening the elimination of the Basque part of Spain.

Yet

Likewise, Islamist terrorists have a cause: the takeover of the Muslim nations (and perhaps the world) by Islamists, and the elimination of the foreign forces that prevent such domination (e.g. U.S. military bases and the allegedly alien presence of Israel). If President Bush announced that any attack on American soil would be met by instant extermination of every Muslim-majority country, al-Qaeda would be deterred just as effectively as the Soviet Union was deterred during the Cold War.

Regarding "preventive" war.

If there is just cause to declare war on another Country, than these causes should be presented to Congress for a constitutionally legal and formal declaration of war. In the case of Afghanistan, there was no excuse for Congress to pass the buck to the Executive. Let us not misuse or confuse the term "war".

....It surprises me that no one seems to bother to note that the idea of "preemptive war" is an oxymoron. What we are really talking about is the extent of Executive Authority to justify using War Powers on the grounds of possible external threats, and without first securing the Constitional authority to do so from Congress.

....Sadly, we have allowed Congress to surrender it's appropriate authority to declare "war" to a greater extent than many people think wise. We have gotten into the habit of allowing the Executive, under the guise of Treaty, War Powers, the UN, NATO, and etc. to assume a degree of legitimacy to wantonly use the military to engage in acts that most reasonable people would consider acts of war (i.e. bombing other Countries). This is not a vice particular to the Bush administration, as it's worth noting that the previous administration engaged in acts of war in many more instances and often with less merit. Regardless, let's not confuse "Executive War Powers", with Consititional "Declarations of War".

....Let's not be coy with each other. Is it appropriate to allow the Executive to hide behind the UN SC in order to engage in War while bypassing Congress? Is there any clear reason why the US has committed itself to a NATO Treaty that retains Article V, obliging us to war on behalf of European Nations that have not themselves demonstrated they will honor the NATO Treaty in full? Why shouldn't Congress, rather than the Executive, been the appropriate Body to defer to regarding the establishment of boundries within which Executive can evoke its War Powers without a formal declaration?

Can we stop with the USSR had lots of nukes, so the same policy would work now meme?

Deterrence is achieved by convincing an opponent that you have the capacity and willingness to destroy them. The USSR was a geopolitical entity confined to a land mass. Add up the number of nuclear weapons we have, and dump them all into that known land mass, and you have a convincing case for the capability to destroy the USSR completely. The willingness to destroy them in a retaliatory strike was a matter of why not, which is also pretty convincing. Hence deterrence.

I don't think there is much question in anyone's mind that the US has the capability to destroy every middle eastern tyrant and nearly every terrorist. What is (or was) completely lacking is any evidence that the US was willing to do so, or anything even close. The nature of both the terrorist and the despot is to hide behind people you aren't willing to harm - note Saddam's tactics. Terrorists need environments in which they can operate without fear of retribution, because they are very weak out in the open. They need armor and a shield. The armor is some silly notion of sovereignity, the idea that you can't come and get me because I am currently sitting on the wrong side of some border or other. Who can provide that sort of cover? Where does the money come from? Why aren't they ever prosecuted in middle eastern countries? If a tyrant even allows terrorists to go unpersued within their borders, they are part of the problem. They are, in effect, putting terrorists behind their armies and daring you to come after them.

The shield is the ability to put enough hostages between you and them that you aren't willing to chase them down. They prey on your unwillingness to do that which is the essence of what they do.

Just a casual reading of any newspaper or a random sampling of the blogosphere would not give anyone the impression that we are willing to employ any portion of our destructive capability to eliminate the problem of terrorism. Of course terrorists, and tyrants, are undeterred.

Look at the standards for a commitment to force being waved around: 1) you have to be certain that a given tyrant was supporting not terrorists in general, but the specific ones that attacked you; 2) there can be no collateral damage; 3) there can be no loss of American soldiers; 4) The UN has to agree with you.

Why would any reasonable person believe, given these discussions, and given the impotence of the USS Cole investigation, not to mention the Mogadishu situation, that America was willing to employ any of its force against anyone ever? Saddam's fall was a keystone in rebuilding our ability to deter.

Economics assumes (semi) rational actors. Fundamentalist extremists do not fit such models.

Hey Invictus -- you're right about terrorists not lending themselves to analysis based on utility maximization... but neither do we in the US (or anyone else), if all our calcualtions based on wrong information and misinterpretation. We attacked Iraq to rid it of WMD... but didn't find any. All this business about costs and benefits is reduced to fluff if our calculations bear little relation to reality. And if the US can't do this well, who can? Russia? The EU?

Those who question the wisdom of United States having applied preventive war principles to Iraq either do not understand the concept of preventive war or are ignorant of the role of intelligence in the modern decision making cycle.

First, President Bush clearly identified Iraq as a "gathering" danger. I don't need to go into the various reasons why; they are well published. The important concept here is his clear and decisive rejection of imminence as justification. Those who claim that the administration raised the specter of imminent danger from the WMDs are obtuse or dishonest. In this new war (WWIV, clash of civilizations, the euphomistic war against "terrorism," or, as I prefer to call it, the war between modern civilization and 12th century jihadist Islam), Becker and Posner appreciate the paradigm shift--we cannot afford to wait for imminence to occur, as defined by November 10 policies and attitudes. I must say, though, that the criminal justice analogy cannot be operative here because we are faced with religious fanatics who are anticipating martyrdom--not rational beings who may be deterred by the prospect of death or suffering. The goals of preventive war would thus be to kill them before they kill us and/or to make it as difficult for them as we can. Thus, under this new concept both Iraq and Afghanistan actions are amply justified if we can demonstrate that the administration used intelligence properly.

Second, intelligence is not reporting of facts or of past events, although it takes both into account. Intelligence is an estimate of the enemy's capabilities and intentions. Although difficult, the decision maker tries to force the intelligence analyst to make a call--out of a range of possibilities, with an attached probability factor. We know that the United Nations, the United States (certainly including the Clinton administration, both the Democrat and Republican controlled Congresses, and even both of the 2004 Democrat candidates), and many of the Western European and other intelligence services thought that Iraq had the capability in both conventional and unconventional munitions to supply "terrorist" groups. We also know that Iraq was led by a person who had demonstrated unmatched cruelty against foreign and domestic enemies, to include the use of chemical and biological weapons. Indeed, our Congress supported President Clinton's Saddam regime change policy precisely because of his past history and our determination that he could not be deterred by normal means. Thus, any intelligence analyst worth his/her salt would have estimated that Saddam's intentions would not ever be benign. And, any decision maker worthy of his/her office would have concluded that Iraq had the capability and the intention to harm us. This calculation cannot be disproved post facto; thus,it does not matter if WMDs are ever found--the actions against both Afhanistan and Iraq were undertaken in accordance with the principles of Preventive War, sound decision making, and proper intelligence processes.

At the end it boils down to risk/benefit analysis. As a former intelligence planner, I fully support President Bush's evident calculation that the benefits of armed and other actions outweigh the risks of not undertaking them. In addition, I admire his bold, almost Wilsonian, initiative to introduce democracy to the region, a step that is also in line with the preventive war principles.

Carl Kraeff

Carl: I agree. Yet I am concerned about proper intelligence processes when conducting risk/benefit analysis. As a former intelligence planner, are you concerned about the new intelligence law?

See http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/AngeloCodevilla.pdf

“Why US intelligence is inadequate, and how to fix it” by Angelo M. Codevilla

“Conventional wisdom used to be that US intelligence was the lifeblood of the war on terror. By 2004 no one contested that intelligence, especially the CIA, was at the heart of policies that had failed to stem terrorism and had turned military victory in Iraq into embarrassment. The high level commissions that examined current failures began to suspect that these reflected longstanding, basic faults. They only scratched the surface. In fact US intelligence in all its functions – collection, quality control (otherwise known as counter intelligence), analysis, and covert action –is hindering America’s war.”

You seem to have ignored a key part of reality - In the most important case of preventive war to date, the method chosen for preventing terrorism -invading and occupying Iraq - is actually creating more terrorists than it is deterring. It would seem difficult to justify under any reasonable approximation of what is actually going on in the real world.

An act of deterrence seems to describe an act to affect another's cost/benefit analysis by increasing the perceived cost of a violent action.

Humanitarian aid and free & fair trade (and the consequential threat of loss of these benefits) are another way of increasing the cost of violent action. You didn't touch on these methods during your analysis. Given the recent and costly problems that the military has had to subdue a "rogue" state, could you comment why you feel that violence is the preferred method to raise the costs associated with terrorist behaviors when alternative methods could be employed?

Michael:

The new Intelligence Reorganization Law can be viewed as smoke and mirrors--as an artificial makeover that is unlikely to improve our intelligence failings that are described by Angelo M. Codevilla (http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/AngeloCodevilla.pdf).

However, as with any organizational change, we need to look behind the boxes and look at the resource allocations, as well as to a change in culture. By putting more resources into HUMINT (human sources intelligence) and into processing capabilities, the law is certainly plugging some huge holes. The problem with HUMINT, however, may not be solved by simply hiring more case officers with appropriate linguistic skills. As "Spengler" has pointed out, the United States may just have to rely on the Israelis and the Indians for HUMINT. See his thought provoking article in Asia Times (http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK11Ak01.html).

A deeper problem has been analysts' predilection to either fudge or to overstate their estimates. Of course, this is to be expected whenever intelligence is treated as a support function--to be rewarded when "right" and punished when "wrong." If the command/decision making environment is "zero defects," the analyst will get punished not only when the intelligence is incorrect but also when the operation is not successful. (A planning corollary is the maxim that the planners take the blame if the operation has problems but the operators take the credit if the operation succeeeds). The successsful analyst learns to survive by not taking many chances (CIA analysts, in particular, are quite adept at this). Given this dynamic, the establishment of a National Intelligence Director may eventually result in the production of more useful intelligence if the decision makers (a) truly make intelligence a command function and demand that analysts do not fudge their estimates, and (b) evaluate the performance of the intelligence analysts on the basis of the process and not the outcome.

Carl Kraeff

This debate, like so many others, indicates that many viewers and writers do not share the same assumptions and understandings that are necessary to wage a cohesive, structured debate.

All debates generally take place within assumptions about how the world is, and what definitions correctly apply to oft-used terms like

terrorism,

rogue state

war

preemptive war

defence (canadian spelling)

etc etc,

As a result of fundamental disagreement and a lack of unity in our historical understanding of US-global and middle eastern relations (partly due to commonsensical understandings diffused throughout the US mainstream media), discussions such as these tend to become a battle between conclusions based on premises that are alien to one another's arguments.

Gary,

Becker explicitly referred to changes that increase the power and accessibility of weapons

Sure, but you're the one that brought up "cuts both ways" and "raises the costs of intervening", which is why I addressed my comment to you, not Becker. Do you not realize that we aren't using nukes, chemical weapons, or biologicals, whereas we are using RPVs, JDAMs, and concrete bombs? So far, at least, we have in fact chosen the less-collateral-cost innovations over the higher-damage-per-dollar ones. Do you see any indication we're likely to change this anytime soon?

At the end it boils down to risk/benefit analysis. As a former intelligence planner, I fully support President Bush's evident calculation that the benefits of armed and other actions outweigh the risks of not undertaking them. In addition, I admire his bold, almost Wilsonian, initiative to introduce democracy to the region, a step that is also in line with the preventive war principles.

Carl,

If you are indeed a former intelligence planner, it is no wonder that the intelligence services of this country have been surprised by and miscalculated all the major events since World War II including the nuclear, military and economic capablilities of the Soviet Union (alternately under and overestimating them), the Iranian Revolution, the revolutions of 1989, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and on and on.

First of all a preventative war is clearly prohibited by the United Nations Charter of which we are still a signatory. If we want to say preventive war is now okay, we are throwing away 100 years of progress and the sacrifice of over 100 million lives. Sorry, I don't want to go there.

I believe that the war in Afghanistan was defensive in that it was in response to an attack by Al Qaeda, an organization that for all intents and purposes was an agent of the Taliban, and was therefore justified under international law.

But the arguments you use to justify the Iraq war are just not true even if you are trying to justify an indefensible preventitive war.

We know that the United Nations . . . thought that Iraq had the capability in both conventional and unconventional munitions to supply "terrorist" groups.

Although there was quit a consensus that Iraq possessed stockpiles of WMDs, there was no evidence or consensus that Saddam had ever, or had any intention to, supply weapons to "terrorist" groups. In fact, as a secular, socialist state, OBL and other fundamentalist Islamic terrorist groups hate Saddam almost as much as they hate the U.S. About the only real link that the administration could point to in the run-up to the war was that Saddam was paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This is a pretty weak connection especially considering that the Saudis do the exact same thing. And Saddam was a paranoid meglamaniac. He was not about to give his most prized weapons to anyone he could not control.

Also, Saddam had allowed weapons inspectors back into the country and was cooperating. They were finding nothing. We claimed it was because they were hiding their WMDs, turns out it was because they actually had been destroyed. If war was justified, it would have been when the inspectors reported to the U.N. that Saddam was no longer cooperating, not before.

Indeed, our Congress supported President Clinton's Saddam regime change policy precisely because of his past history and our determination that he could not be deterred by normal means

Actually, it was obvious that he could be deterred by normal means. He had tons of stockpiles of WMDs during the first Gulf War and never used them. Apparently he was afraid of massive retaliation by Coalition forces and Israel if he used his chemical weapons on us or Israel.

This administration has destabilized the middle east further by this ill-advised, poorly planned, budget busting war. We now stand at over 10,000 casulties with no end in site. Democracy is not spreading. Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, The Gulf States, Syria, and the rest of the Middle East are just as corrupt, oppressive and anti-democratic as they were four years ago. The countries with oil have actually become more oppressive since they have been able to use their increased oil revenues caused by our actions to bolster their governments and use the "war on terror" as an excuse to crack down on descent.

"It is quite remarkable that Bush’s argument for war can be regarded as the predatory imperialist aims outlined by the crypto-fascist Project for a New American Century. On the other hand, a minority of warmongers and apologists can be seen in the light of the apparent fabrications which lead to the end of any possibility of social justice in a reactionary state. Let us never forget that the pro-Sharon neoconservative cabal provides a pretext for an oil war masquerading as an endless crusade against "terrorism." Clearly, the influence of Leo Strauss is solid evidence of the flagrant lies promulgated by the political donor class."

A gem of obscurantism. What exactly is remarkable about being able to interpret events along the lines of some alleged conspiracy? Any train of events can be so contstrued. What exactly is a 'crypto fascist"? Some old Nazi hidden away in the Pentagon, with his enigma machine? The sentence prefaced by "on the other hand" hardly seems contrastive, so why the "on the other hand"? One wonders what the "apparent fabrications" are, and what a "reactionary state" is? It's really all about oil. Original.

Anonymous:

The quote to which you responded was generated by something similar to Chomskybot. It isn't supposed to mean anything in particular. I forget the website ...

Freder:

Your argument is very rational but it is sadly a pre-9/11 one. As both Posner and Becker have pointed out, we need to change our approach and our way of thinking--the paradigm has shifted so much that the pre-9/11 concepts are not helpful.

Please consider that we need to address the enemy's capability first: what does it have to hurt us/our interests and can he employ those capabilities? Second, we try to figure out the enemy's intentions; this is much harder and accounts for most of the miscalculations and surprises that you pointed out. Keep in mind that both capabilities and intentions are estimates, that is they are mere probabilities. So the challenges for the various actors are as follows:

(1) analysts must compile orders of battle and interpret their significance (capability to cause damage) and try to project if, when, and how the enemy may act, to include its reaction to our own actions (intention). During WWII, our success in breaking both the German and Japanese codes allowed us to determine the enemy's plans/intentions/and even actual movements/locations. During the Cold War, this had become much more difficult but we could estimate the Soviet Union's intentions vis-a-vis a direct confrontation with the West based on its history of actions and non-actions. Thus, Mutually Assured Destruction was at first a threat, and later a theory that gained in strength as the years passed. We did not know that MAD worked (or the enemy's true capabilities) until after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, but we were pretty close. Now, intelligence work has become even more difficult as we are facing a world-wide movement of religious fanatics and rogue nations who are using unconventional weapons and/or terror. So, the probability factors are even lower than previously, except that at the tactical and operational levels (using tactical, theater and national means), the battlefield is much clearer than ever before.

(2) planners must prepare either in accordance with worst-case scenarios or with assumptions that are given to them by policy makers. Keep in mind that it is the planning process that is important, not the actual plan itself. Also, remember that the planning process uses a problem-solving logic model.

(3) decision-makers apply cost/benefit analysis to set benchmarks. Before 9/11, our go/no-go benchmark was imminent hostilities, with the probability of hostilities being quite high. This was based on our estimate that the Soviets would not risk being annihilated by our counter-strike (MAD). Thus, we had to make sure that our counter-strike capabilities were always up to snuff (thus the arms race). After 9/11, our enemy changed drastically; the Islamic Jihadists would not be deterred aby a counter-strike--indeed, they welcomed martyrdom. They also demostrated creativity and a degree of boldness not seen since the kamikazis. They also were actively pursuing the use of unconventional weaponry (WMDs) that are capable of inflicting enormous damage. Finally, in case of Saddam, we had a megalomaniac who had a penchant for the unexpected and the abnormal.

I hope that you can see that, if the primary mission is to prevent a repetition of 9/11 type catastrophic attacks, the decision maker must use a different benchmark, one that is based on lower probabilities (less certainty). Of course, in Afghanistan's case the pre-9/11 paradigm was still operative, as we took action against the jihadist organization that had already attacked us and the government that harbored it. In Iraq's case, the logic of the new paradigm was applied in a logical, proper and successful fashion,at least in the first phase. Of course, there have been difficulties during the occupation/pacification/rebuilding phase that we now find ourselves. These difficulties do not, and cannot, detract from the soundness of the basic decision to take military action. Incidentally, I do believe that we should have attacked the day after Hans Blix reported that Iraq had not fully complied with 1441.

"Terrorism" or "terror" is not an economic word or concept, unlike communism or fascism or imperialism, it is psychological. The hellish reality is that terrorism (like war) is an extension of politics. Unlike traditional warfare, though, terrorism can be successful without a successful terrorist attack. The success is in the “terror” created by the unknown probability of a terrorist attack. The only way to defeat to terror is to solve the unknown probability factor, thus defusing the psychological weapon with intelligence. The degree to which a traditional war disables the terrorist infrastructure and decreases the probability of a terrorist attack is, again, an unknown probability which can only be solved with intelligence. Uncertainty is the enemy, but we are a capitalist culture built on intelligent risk managment. It is this spirit and philosophy which will dilute the psychology of terrorism until Bin Laden is scratching his beard in bewilderment at the cost-benefit analysis of his efforts. We should fight psychology with psychology, it is our national and cultural strength. And our psychological weapon is INTELLIGENCE.

Carl: How would an intelligence planner go about conducting a risk-benefit analysis of a preemptive military strike on Iran’s WMD capabilities?

See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/iran-strikes.htm

Preventive War or Preventive Thought?: The Logical Conclusion for an anti-Chomskyite

B: You look deep in thought J. What are you thinking about?

J: I was just thinking about preventive war and how it seems a good logical idea.

B: Really? You think it’s logical?

J: You don’t?! You can’t be that naïve. Of course it’s logical.

B: Please explain yourself.

J: Well, I mean if we just go kill the other people first, it will just save us the trouble of having to do it later after they attack us, and could possibly save many more lives than if we wait. And it’s probably cost efficient. Why would any intelligent person wait? It’s like preventive medicine. You don’t wait until you get the illness before you start taking preventive medicine. Otherwise, it’s not preventive medicine. How much simpler could it be?

B: Hmmm I’m not so sure you can apply the preventive medicine analogy when talking about human affairs and war. It’s a little more complicated than that, don’t you think?

J: Hell no! It’s not complicated! If we know that these folks may eventually do something to us, why shouldn’t we just go after them first? Killem’! Killem’ all!

B: How will we determine who may want to do something to us in the future?

J: See?! This is the perfect example! I can tell by the way you’re questioning me that it’s possible that you’ll probably want to attack me in the future.

B: You can tell that simply by the questions I’ve asked you?

J: There you go again! You’ve just proved my point! You are attacking me! I knew I should’ve kicked your red-ass after you recommended that therapist! You commies are always sneaking up on us just waiting to pounce when our guard is down.

B: Commies?! What are you talking about? I’ve asked you five simple questions and now you’re calling me a commie? You say that I’m attacking you? You say that I’m sneaking up on you? And you say that you should have kicked my red-ass earlier? And you said I’ve proved your point? What are you talking about?

J: Yes, you have proved my point.

B: How have I done that?

J: Well, if I would have just killed you earlier on I wouldn’t have to endure all this pain you’re inflicting on me. See?

B: I’m inflicting pain on you? What have I done?

J: You may as well have stuck a knife into my back you unappreciative, Che T-shirt wearing, traitor.

B: So what if everybody else decides to implement the preventive doctrine? What will keep them from killing you first?

J: Because I believe in God and country and…(BANG!)

(Just then a gun shot went off and J’s head splattered against the wall. Everyone turned around only to see Barbara, his wife, standing there wearing her NRA T-shirt, her Wal-Mart sneakers, holding a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi in one hand and the smoking gun in the other.)

Barb: Sorry, B. I heard what J said and thought he was going to kill you.

(Barbara drops her gun, opens a Pepsi, looks into B’s eyes and says…..)

Barb: Be sure to vote for Bush!

well, preventive war is good for our nation, good for our people'safety, but no war is the greatest thing i can ever imagine

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