WAR on Terrorism

BOTW on the case for treating the War on Terrorism as a war and not a criminal action. The second point is right on the mark as well.

The criminal-justice system is designed to value procedure over outcome. This is entirely fitting in a case of pisicide, and it's a trade-off worth making even when dealing with crimes against human beings. But we are at war with an enemy that seeks to destroy our civilization, an enemy that observes no civilized rules of combat. Defining that conflict as merely a criminal justice matter risks tying the hands of the government as it tries to protect citizens from atrocities that could be far worse than Sept. 11.

Civil libertarians, too, should be wary of treating terrorism as primarily a criminal-justice matter. If we are relying on the courts to protect us from attack, judges may be inclined to scale back the rights of terrorist defendants, establishing precedents that would inevitably apply to nonterror defendants as well.