Jay Honeck writes:

The issue of enemy combatants is a complicated one when the enemy
fights an international, religiously-driven war.

There isn't any such war.

The rules of war, so
cut and dried when everyone agrees to wear different-colored uniforms,
behind a flag, get pretty fuzzy when one side hides behind women and
children, and doesn't identify themselves until they pop up holding an
RPG.

The safety of democracy, when the rules of war are cut and dried, is put in
grave danger when the rules become fuzzy and indistinct and demogogues claim
to be the only individuals qualified to recognize war when they see it.

This war is quite different from past wars.

Yes: It's imaginary, and the illusion exists only to serve the ends of
political leaders.

Thanks to instant worldwide communication national boundaries mean little. Radical
Islamicists span the globe, and carry on the fight without regard to
nationality.

Radical Muslims are such a small percentage of the world population that they
do not merit a mention. And there are equal numbers of other radicals
carrying out their aggression in the name of other religions.

For the first time in history, an enemy is capable
(thanks to this wonderful internet) of carrying on a global war
without any kind of traditional force structure.

There is no global war.

This means that the enemy can be literally *anywhere* -- truly a
chilling thought.

Especially when you consider how this is the method used again and again by
political leaders throughout history to convert free societies into
dictatorships. Remember what Göring said at Nuremburg?

Gitmo is a POW camp, and POWs are released when the war ends.

It's a concentration camp, and there is no war.

With one side so diffuse, and no one empowered to sign surrender papers,
how do you tell when the war is "over"? Your guess is as good as
mine.

You don't. You pretend that the "war" continues forever, as an excuse to
maintain and augment an ever-growing police state. One day you're "at war"
with Eurasia, and the next you're "at war" with Eastasia.

The "enemy" seems diffuse because it doesn't exist. But the advantage of
having a diffuse "enemy" is that nobody can prove that it doesn't exist, and
so "wars" can be continued forever.

How can we address the diffuse nature of the enemy?

We can't. We should instead insist on a clear identification of the "enemy,"
and a formal declaration of war, if required, with criteria that will
unambiguously identify a win or loss of that war. It has worked throughout
history, and it still works today.

Aside from the removal of Saddam, one of the main purposes of the
invasion of Iraq was to concentrate the opposition in one place,
under the "flag" of Jihad.

The main motivation for the invasion of Iraq was a child's desire to take
revenge for embarrassment of his father.

Like flies to ****,
the terrorists squandered their one true advantage by geographically
concentrating themselves so that a traditional military could defeat
them.

The U.S. has practiced some of the worst foreign policy in history since Bush
was elected. As a result, it is creating "terrorists" where none existed
before. Almost all the goodwill that the U.S. has ever accumulated has been
destroyed by the current President's egregiously incompetent management of
foreign affairs.

It also may illustrate that the enemy has finally realized that all
they really have to do is wait till November 2008, and they will be
able to march into the Green Zone unopposed. Much like the Viet Cong
in 1974, all they have to do is wait for the US to retreat.

The sooner, the better. The U.S. has no place in Iraq, and has many problems
that it needs to solve at home.

Not that I would expect you to appreciate or understand the often
subtle nature of this worldwide conflict, but you really need to think
a LITTLE before you post. The issues are never as cut and dried as
you apparently believe.

What I see is that Göring was right.