It is *very* obvious to me that we *have* been attacked, that the hijacking of 4 planes, the destruction of the World Trade Center, the damage to the Pentagon and the death of 7,000 people is transcendentally clear as being an act of war, and we are morally justified in responding to this act with force. More than justified, it is a practical *necessity* that we respond with some use of force -- the consequences of *not* doing so are more and more incidents, and more and more deaths.

However,

(1) We should not act without clear and convincing proof of who is reponsible for the attacks.

(2) That proof needs to be shared with the people of the United States, and not just with our allies (to convince them to participate with us). In a democracy, I should not have to rely on the reactions of foreign leaders to justify a drastic and potentially morally perilous action that my country wants to take.

(3) Any military action that is taken needs to be directed as narrowly as possible against the people responsible. This does not mean that innocent people will not be killed. It is the nature of war that innocent people are killed, which is why war should always be the last option used, and only when absolute necessary. But the deaths of uninvolved civilians, even if they are the citizens of countries which have harbored terrorists, would be partly *our* responsibility, and we need to act in such a way as to minimize those deaths.

(4) Still, the fact the innocent people will die is not sufficient to rule out the use of military force. Innocent people died on 09-11-01, and *more* innocent people will die in the next attack, and the next. The purpose of any military action must be to take out the people responsible for those attacks, and the ones we've suffered through in the past, and by that to save the lives of those innocent people who would die in future attacks.

(5) But military force cannot be the only aspect of this campaign, and I'm not talking about freezing financial assests (although there's nothing wrong with that). While I outright reject the notion that in some perverse way we had this coming to us, there is a great deal of truth in the idea that we have some amount of culpability in creating the conditions that allowed the attacks to occur. Our messing around in Afghanistan and then walking away, our one-sided backing of the Israeli government even when they were acting badly and breaking their agreements, our sponsership of globalization without proper concern for the problems and concerns of the rest of the world, and so on. We need to deal with the problems that we have had a hand in creating, if only for the selfish reason that by doing so, we may alleviate some of the conditions under which Islamic fundamentalism has grown as dangerous to us as it obviously has.

(6) To that end, we need to "bomb them with butter, bribe them with hope." We *must* act as nation-builders, or at least facilitators so that nations can rebuild themselves. We should do this not out of guilt, from simply as a matter of enlightened self-interest.

(7) If we are going to engage in a war, then it needs to be an officially declared war. The only entity in the United States that can declare war is the Congress, and if it is to be war, then they alone can say it. This is not the Gulf of Tonkin, some flimsy puffed-up excuse for hostilities -- we've been hit hard on our own shores, and a Declaration of War, if military action is necessary, is certainly justified. But don't ask us, the American people, to sacrfice without declaring war, and don't ask the people to sacrifice without asking the same of corporations.

(8) It's good to remember that Osama bin Laden, whether or not he was the party ultimately reponsible for the 09-11-01 attacks, *has* declared war on *us*, he has declared a fatwa on Americans, both military and civilian, and has, in the past, killed Americans abroad, on American soil, our embassies in East Africa.

(9) Finally, we need to remind ourselves that the purpose of any military action should not be retribution or retaliation for its own sake, although we would certainly be justified in seeking those things. Any military action should be in the service of the ultimate goal of making Americans secure, not only in their homeland but elsewhere in the world. Any military action, or any other part of this campaign against terrorism that we have been thrust into, which doesn't serve to move us closer to that goal is counter-productive and should not be carried out. If using the legal mechanisms and processes of our country and the world community could stop terrorism, bring the people responsible for the attacks on America to justice and make us secure in our homes, then it would be best to use them instead of military action. Unfortunately, however, I do not think that is the case. I think that it is inevitable that we will have to fight. And so, we should.

I don't relish being thought of as a warmonger, and I'm not motivated (I don't believe) by bloodlust, but I do think that there *is* such a thing as a "just" war, and it doesn't take overblown Bushian rhetoric about "fighting evil" to justify this one. Whatever our faults, whatever we have done wrong in the past (and continue to do wrong) in our foreign policies, we have done *nothing* which justified 7,000 innocent civilians being killed 19 days ago.