Churchill and an Earlier War on Terror
Posted in Foreign Affairs by Ken Thomas
The Sage of Mt. Airy reacts to libertarian skepticism about the war on terror--the one waged against anarchists at the turn of the last century. Did the West overreact then, as it might have today? The Sage: "But, while the costs of taking action are, or at least become obvious, the costs of doing too little or nothing at all are not so."
Christopher Harmon of Marine Corps University details Winston Churchill's presence at a London battlefield of that war, as he recounts it in
Thoughts and Adventures.
10:26 PM / January 6, 2011
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Whatever might be said about the "war" on anarchism, it was carried out through solid police work and international cooperation. In other words, it didn't involve the dispatch of troops abroad. This, I think, is the better lesson.
We have international cooperation and solid police work operating in the war on terror, too. The fact that we could not possibly get total international cooperation made the military projects seem reasonable.
Kate's right. We've had lots of cooperation across the globe, and some success in treating terrorism as simple crime. Nonetheless, the size of the islamofascist movement (numbering in the millions, almost certainly), calls for something beyond good police work. The analogy to incipient Naziism is apt. Let's LEARN from history and not pull another Chamberlain. I'm not arguing that Bush's response was optimal, but it was superior to sitting on our hands and waiting for Interpol to cough up the suspects.