I watched both installments of ABC-TV’s “The Path to 911”. The Clinton Administration has taken a great deal of heat for treating the war on terror as a law enforcement issue.

As much as I hate to do this, I have to offer a brief, and grudging, defense of this approach. In a previous post I talked about contemporary use of the word war. The word is used with reference to activities which are law enforcement matters, the ‘War’ on Drugs, the ‘War’ on Poverty and so forth. This nation has as many “wars” as it has social issues (you know, The ‘War’ on Science, The ‘War’ against Gays, The ‘War’ on Immigrants The 'War' on Christmas, etc). It comes as no surprise to me that the Clinton Administration would have treated the war on terror as if it were properly waged in the same way as our other 'wars'.

And in all fairness, we should remember that this way of waging the war on terror did work, sort of. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (as dramatized in the movie) a manhunt began for Ramzi Yousef. That manhunt was successful. Yousef was arrested, tried, found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without parole, a sentence which he is serving at the Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado. Going after bin Laden in the same way no doubt seemed like a good idea at the time. (I personally did not think so, but I was not a member of the Clinton Administration.)

In one scene in the movie, viewers learn (if they didn’t already know) that the Clinton Administration informed the government of Pakistan of plans to bomb bin Laden’s compound in Afghanistan. As it turns out, more than likely, someone in the Pakistani government alerted the Taliban. The Clinton Administration is criticized for this as an instance of stupidity, or worse, playing politics. The justification is that the missiles launched against bin Laden would have to fly over Pakistani airspace and the Administration feared that this might have been interpreted as an attack on Pakistan by India. Quite frankly, I think this fear was entirely justified. And a decision to inform the Pakistani government cannot easily be disparaged without ignoring the very real possibility of provoking a war between two nations who don’t need much provocation in the first place. (Talk about a rush to judgment!) In all candor, if the present Administration had made the same decision for the same reason I would be defending it, not as the right idea, but as an understandable and forgivable idea.

That being said, I do believe that there was a way to inform the appropriate element(s) of the Pakistani government without informing everyone. Hint: Jack Ryan in the Hunt for Red October.

Another problem with a missile strike on the bin Laden compound was the fact that, as a law enforcement operation a missile strike would seem like overkill. After all, we don’t launch missile strikes against the leaders of the South American drug cartels. We don’t bomb the drug zones in, say, New York City. In a true war (as opposed to a law enforcement exercise) civilian casualties are generally acceptable as unavoidable despite best intentions; in a law enforcement exercise civilian casualties are absolutely unacceptable. I find it easy to understand the qualms which the Clinton Administration had about civilian casualties in a ‘war’ on terror.

I also find it easy to understand why the Bush Administration, prior to 911 continued the war on terror as a law enforcement matter: that’s how it was handed over.

Most of the failures prior to 911 are understandable, even forgivable.

What is not understandable—what is not forgivable—is the insistence after 911 on continuing to fight the war on terror as a law enforcement matter. Insisting post-911 on repeating the failed tactics and strategies of the past is not understandable; it is not forgivable. When your enemy, in declaring war on you, makes clear by word and by deed that he recognizes no class of individuals called ‘civilians’ or ‘noncombatants’ you ought to understand that things have changed. It didn’t take five years for the passengers aboard flight 93 to realize that; they launched the first counterattack.

The world that existed before 11 September 2001 is gone; and it’s never coming back. We live in a different world. We live in a different world because the enemy have altered the conditions under which the war—a world war—is to be waged. We have to fight the battle that the enemy have pitched, not the battle we want them to pitch, or that we wish they would pitch. It is no longer (if it ever was) a law enforcement problem; the enemy have decided that issue for us. Those days, if they ever truly existed, are gone.

In just the same way as World War I ended the 19th century; this war has ended the 20th century. The Cold War is over; and the tactics developed for fighting that war are as useless as sending horse cavalry against tank battalions. And just as World War II left a new world in its wake, when this war is finished, many years down the road no doubt, there will be a new world. What that world will look like will be determined by the victors of the present war. We have to live and fight in the world which now exists. And in the world which now exists, Osama bin Laden and whoever replaces him after he’s arrested or taken out wants that world to be an Islamic world and is fighting a war to bring about just that result. That is their stated objective; and it is foolishness to pretend* that we can fight that issue as a law enforcement matter. The law enforcement route was the path to 911. To insist otherwise, this side of 911, is neither understandable nor forgivable.

For me the importance of the movie was not an answer to the question, “Who’s responsible?” Four different presidential administrations can take responsibility for various failures along the way. The importance of the movie, for me, was that it seems to ask a question, “What is the path from 911?”

Plan A—the plan that liberals want to stick to—didn’t work. That may have been arguable on 10 September 2001. Now, it isn’t. Plan B, for all its attendant messiness, is to fight the war as if it’s a war, bearing in mind that this is a new type of war, calling for us not to adhere unalterably to older notions of warfare and how to conduct it. Some of the war will be fought nation against nation, some nation against nations-within-nations, some nation against well-armed paramilitary organizations.

Today, the President’s critics are upset because he ‘politicized’ 911 in his speech last night. They still don’t get it. Yesterday was not the anniversary of a day on which thousands of Americans just happened to be killed in a tragedy. Yesterday was the anniversary of the day on which the enemy made clear that they meant it when they declared war on us. Yesterday marked the fifth year of our active and overt participation in a war that has been waged against us for decades--a war which was not taken seriously until 11 September 2001. War is, among other things (i.e., not the only thing†), the extension of politics, whether the left like it or not. The President did not politicize 911; the enemy did, five years ago. If not for the enemy’s actions, we might have have been doing something else yesterday.

As the Ghost of Christmas Past said to Ebenezer Scrooge, “That these things are as they are, don’t blame me.” Want to complain about the politicization of 911? Go bitch to a terrorist. I’m sure you’ll find a sympathetic audience there.

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* The reason it’s pretending is that al-Qaeda and other groups of their ilk have stated this objective plainly.

† You have to be careful with Clausewitz. He did actually say that war is the extension of politics. But he wasn’t making a statement of fact, or general priniple. This statement was part of a larger argument in which he pointed out that war cannot be simplified by saying either that it is like a duel or even that it is merely the extension of politics. The larger argument is that war is comprised of a ‘trinity’ of emotion, chance, and rational calculation. That being said, I, James Frank Solís, speaking for myself and not Clausewitz, do just happen to believe that war is, in addition to many other things, also an extension of politics.