THIS ISN'T LIKE THE WAR ON DRUGS

His new war, we are being told, will not be like the wars, when we knew
where to drop our bombs. TV commentators repeatedly make the analogy to the
"war on drugs."

Unfortunately there is a valid comparison between these two struggles that
goes beyond the one which the pundits have mentioned. Their point is that
in each the enemy is shadowy, nonlocalized, shifting, and hard to target or
eradicate. All true. But there is a reason why the war on drugs is
unwinnable and, unfortunately, the same may become true of this conflict.

The problem with the war on drugs is that the enemy was misidentified from
the beginning. The struggle was miscast, and the end result is a "war" that
has done much more harm than good for our society. If we had called it a
"war on addiction" we might have won it by now. But instead drugs were used
as an omnibus enemy in which questionable moral crusades against substances
that many Americans use to harmless, or even positive, effect, were lumped
in with the real enemy: addictions to heroin, crack, and amphetamines.

The legitimate rights of Americans to the pursuit of happiness were
targeted along with legitimate enemies: a smaller list of genuinely
dangerous and addictive drugs. This imprecise targeting has led to the
incarceration of millions of innocent Americans and a lessening of freedoms
and civil rights for the rest of us. It has fostered a lucrative trade in
illegal drugs, created a drug-industrial complex of testing labs and teen
boot camps with an economic life of its own, and caused a general erosion
of trust in our law enforcement, political, and justice systems.

The cynicism, cruelty, corruption, and dishonesty of the war on drugs has
helped erode the social contract at the foundation of our society. A war
with a Big Lie at its heart causes massive collateral damage to the society
which mounts it. This war will never be won because it was originally
launched under false premises in which unjust goals have been lumped
together with just ones.

The similarity with this new war is that we are again in danger of framing
the fight in the wrong terms, thereby creating new enemies and igniting a
conflict which we cannot win. Only this one could have much more horrible
consequences. This is a unique moment when we are able to pause and
contemplate if not the beginning of the war, certainly a well-defined
moment of terrible escalation.

The people who planned the attacks on Sept. 11 were clearly smart. It seems
there are some things about us that they have understood better than we
have understood ourselves. They may also understand some geopolitical
realities better than we do. They will stop at nothing. The brainchildren
of Edward Teller may soon be available to them. One of their goals is to
frighten and shock us. This they have done. But we suspect that their
ultimate goal is to provoke a world war between Islam and the West.

All the talk of "This is war, let's show them what we're made of" and even
"bomb Afghanistan back into the Stone Age" causes us to fear that our
government, with the blessing of a public whipped into war fever, will give
the perpetrators exactly what they want. Will we, with our response, play
right into their evil hands?

All eyes are now on America to see how we respond. Our response will define
our relationship with the rest of the world for generations. If we identify
specific perpetrators or legitimate targets that threaten more of the same,
then force is justified in removing these threats. But if we lash out with
force just to show the world how tough we are, and if we kill many innocent
civilians, then we may create hundreds of bin Ladens and thousands of
suicide bombers, help foment radical Islamic revolutions among moderate
states, and ultimately bring upon ourselves and the world much greater
destruction.

This war must be against hate, inequity, and blind, unthinking nationalism.
Along with any military response, we must look honestly at our role in the
world, at all the sources of anti-Americanism, legitimate and illegitimate,
and proceed with our eyes open.

Let us learn from the failure of the war on drugs that if we misidentify
our enemy and frame our struggle incorrectly, we will do harm to many
innocents and democratic institutions, and we will all lose.