Fine stuff, Senator Kerry -- especially that third point above: legitimacy, legitimacy, legitimacy. I think of the difference between the U.S. response to Islamist terrorism after the first WTC bombing in 1993, which eventually culminated in twenty-five convictions in open court in the Southern District of New York (no torture, no "extraordinary rendition," no suspension of habeas corpus), and the depredations of the Bush/Cheney regime since 9/11. Speaking of that "hell of a debate" we should be having, have you had a chance to check out Samantha Power's recent essay in the NYRB?

Thanks for stopping by the Café again.

Thanks for your post senator.

One all important fact keeps getting pushed to the background - and it's the definition of terrorism.

Terrorists, by definition, don't attack armies. That's why we call it terrorism - they attack civilians and carefully sidestep armies.

To send an army after 'terrorists' is akin to settling our scores with grizzly bears by challenging them to a football game. Grizzlies don't play football. Terrorists don't fight armies.

Bang-on right, Senator. Keep up the good fight.

Senator, thank you for laying out a thoughtful and potentially useful approach to dealing with this threat. Regrettably, the American electorate was kept in the dark regarding the opportunity cost we would incur by plunging forward on our great Mesopotamian misadventure.

Cost/benefit analysis about the our national interest would have dictated we pursue Afghanistan to a satisfactory conclusion. A quick look at the CIA's own fact book on Afghanistan shows that its 2007 population is about 32 million and its per-capita GDP is about $1000 per Afghani. That means we could have invested $32 billion per year into Afghanistan and doubled the per-capita GDP for the country. Who doesn't think that such an investment level for three to five years couldn't have turned Afghanistan into a paradise? At the very least, we would have earned the admiration and support of most of the folks who despise us today. Just look at the relative cost - $32 billion per year and the prospect of success versus $200 billion per year with no end in sight.

Keep up the good work, Senator. It's just a pity that we aren't four years closer to success than we are now.

Thank you Senator for a great post. I agree completely with your ideas regarding counterinsurgency and would add that another key to winning the support of the local population is through financial assistance. The legitimacy and sincerity of our support is best evidenced by the things people can see and touch: road, bridges, schools, etc.

We also appreciate any help you can provide in pushing back the scurrilous attacks by the McCain campaign against Senator Obama.

Senator:

A year or so before you announced your run for the presidency I watch a speech you gave on C-SPAN wherein you compared South Korea and Egypt over a 30-year period. At the start of the period they were in parity. At the end, South Korea was a huge economic force and a developed country, while Egypt had not advanced at all ("regressed" might even be a more appropriate description).

I was transfixed by your common sense and insights, and it was that speech that made me an early supporter of your presidential bid. It was like water in the Bush-era desert (God help us, it was only his first term!).

Let me just say that brands and slogan come and go everyday, but solidly reasoned and good ideas have legs (as the ad execs would say).

Thank you, Senator Kerry.

But we also need to say the unsayable: global terrorism is not an exstential issue for the United States. Terrorists will never topple our government or take our land or force us to live as infidels under Sharia, nor will they kill us all or destroy the world. Spectacular crimes will happen from time to time. We should do our best to prevent them. But we need to start talking about terrorism in the right context. It's a peril that we face. But it's hardly the most perilous.

Winning the "war of ideas" with "a larger information war" will no doubt be a tough sell to the millions of refugees, the tens of thousands of dead and imprisoned, the untold hundreds of tortured and those otherwise wronged by widespread US human rights violations promulgated by the current administration and Congress.

The US ought to "fight not just a military battle but an information war?" No, senator, your military battles are counter-productive, as the U.S. sinks into a morass of cheap dollars, expensive fuel and widespread hatred of military battles against brutalized foreign civilians, and a new propaganda effort is not the answer.

You stood at the Grand Canyon in August of 2004 and, in response to Bush's taunts, said that even with current knowledge you still would have invaded Iraq. You were wrong then and you're wrong now.

Thank you, Senator, for your thoughtful and thought provoking post. Now for my questions.

We, the people, want to leave Iraq and concentrate our now dwindled resources on Afghanistan. Firstly, what your assessment of the situation in Afghanistan currently? Secondly, what is your assessment of what leaving will do to our current efforts in Iraq. Thirdly, can we still at least start to implement the sort of things you say will work while we're pulling out and leave less hard feelings behind in the process?

I've never understood, other than the money (which we can supply anyway. It's only fair to make reparations,) why we needed to have our contractors going into Iraq to rebuild when the Iraqis need those jobs to feed their families. It's not as if they've never done any of these things for themselves. My pulmonary doctor was educated in the University of Baghdad and he's certainly not devoid of the ways of the modern world. I think it's quite presumptuous and greedy for us to think they can't rebuild their own cities, etc., unless we do it for them. To my mind, that's why the insurgency tears down everything we build. (That and the fact that our contractors don't seem to do much of a good job in rebuilding. Some police stations and hospitals were said to be uninhabitable.) Can we get the war profiteers out first?

So what does a global counterinsurgency doctrine tell us about the war on terror? John Kerry

Virtually nothing at all.

1. Since there's no global insurgency, it should be obvious that there's no need for a "global counterinsurgency doctrine" -- or a "global counterinsurgency," either.

2. Faced with an insurgency it is, also, obvious the state fights the insurgency and not a particular tactic -- that is terror.

Boiled down to its essentials Kerry's formula is nothing but a slightly smarter, more efficient use of state power in support of the imperium.

Shorter Kerry: "We've got over 700 military stations overseas, now; let's go for 900."

Of course, the Senator is right. As it happens, during the 2004 campaign, I tried, at an admittedly low level in the organisation, to inject a thought that I believed might be helpful to the cause. Even though I don't believe in the idea of trying to encapsulate policy within a bumper-sticker format, it occurred to me that much of what needed to be said (then, as now) about terrorism could be summarised as: Tough on terrorism is good; smart on terrorism is better. The past four years make me wish that I'd found a higher-level entry port for the idea.

Let George Bush be remembered for an overly narrow militarized focus on fighting terrorism at the expense of our moral authority and our standing in the world.

So let it be written, so let it be done.

Rock on, Senator Kerry.

Instead of a military-dominated "war on terror," we should be fighting the global counterinsurgency campaign it always should have been.

But how do you ask a predator drone to be the last predator drone to die for a mistake?

Senator and fellow TPMer's, you may find it helpful to read the Rand Report on this topic that came out a few days ago. And btw, Rand is not a liberal think tank.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9351/index1.html

Discussed and Balkinization here.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2008/07/ending-war-on-terrorism.html

Senator Kerry,

Thank you for running in 2004, and thank you for continuing the fight with Barack Obama here in 2008. You being the point-person for Barack's anti-swift boat defense is important and much appreciated.

But please tell Barack, Axelrod, and Plouffe to get on the attack and fight with a happy heart. McCain is pushing the dialogue right now with his smears. Bob Herbert was right in his piece the other day: Barack must get on the offense NOW and exploit McCain's errors. Everyone in this country should know that Phil Gramm think's we're all "whiners" and "mental", but the O Campaign has let this ball drop terribly.

Thanks again, Wade

PS - I am glad Manny Ramirez was traded. Go Sox!!

PPS - I hope you get to see Springsteen at Gillette Stadium tomorrow. He plays "Last To Die" at every concert, and his message this tour is powerful.

We talk much,we love only a little,and we hate too much runescape money