Terrorism and the Framework of War

Matthew Yglesias' argument against responding to international terrorism in the manners and metaphors of war makes sense to me. He writes that in approaching terrorism within the framework of war, "you partake of way too much of the terrorists’ narrative about themselves." He continues:

It’s their conceit, after all, that blowing up a bomb in a train station and killing a few hundred random commuters is an act of war. And war is a socially sanctioned form of activity, generally held to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. What we want to say, however, is that this sporadic commuter-killing isn’t a kind of war, it’s an act of murder. To be sure, not an ordinary murder—a mass murder—but nonetheless murder. It’s true that if al-Qaeda were something like the "blowing up train stations" arm of a major country with which we were otherwise at war, it might make the most sense to think of al-Qaeda as fitting in with spies and saboteurs; criminal adjuncts to a warrior enterprise.

I suppose if we don't think of ourselves as at war with terrorists, then we might be less likely to go to war against countries under the banner of that war. That would be a good thing. I suppose as well that this debate about language would be less of an issue if we didn't generally hold war to be a legally and morally acceptable framework in which to kill people. That would be a good thing too. (VN)