ever since 9/11 i have wanted a national debate on who our enemy was and what was to be done about it.

the president quickly announced that we were in a "war" and every political leader and opinion-maker quickly fell in behind the characterization.

this blog was started because of my frustration at that lack of debate and my exasperation at the bushies for not prosecuting the war as a war. i hurled at them the most serious charge that i could make, that they were conducting this war as if it were a police action.

i still don't know how the bushies really feel in their heart of hearts but the democrats, specifically of course john kerry, has made it clear now how they view it, as a police action, despite all of their, and his, rhetoric up to this point.

the revelation, the umasking, occurred starkly in last sunday's new york times magazine cover story. richard holbroke, a plausible kerry choice for secretary of state flatly declared that we were not at war. the candidate himself not just made the conceptual analogy to police work in reducing the threat to inevitable quality of life "nuisances" like prostitution and drugs, but, dropping the analog, stated explicitly that that's how he would fight it, by more effectively cutting off funding, by arresting terrorists, and the like.

in his op-ed piece last week thomas l. friedman made the point for all democrats, that the administration is "addicted to 9/11," which struck me the same way as did jimmy carter's infamous statement that we ought not have an "inordinate fear of communism."

i feel so foolish. i used to have a kerry bumpersticker on my car. when my friends asked me if i really thought that kerry would do anything much different than would bush i had to admit that i didn't. it never occurred to me that this was how kerry really felt. i believed him when he said that we were at war. i believed his sincerity when he voted for the use of force authorization and his recommittment to it in his grand canyon speech.

i first felt the gulf between me and kerry in the times magazine article when the author described, and kerry confirmed, that he had not really been changed by 9/11. my knit-browed curiosity and puzzlement gave way to jaw-dropping wonder by the end of the article and the full expostulation of kerry's, and his would-be administration's, view.

the reason for the polarization of the country is now clear to me, the hatred of bush too. we are divided between those, like me, who believe that we are at war, and those who believe that we are not.

i am still troubled by doubt. maybe it IS just a police issue. isn't that conceptually consistent with the strategic implementation of "sharon-izing" our response that i proposed here just recently? we HAVEN'T been attacked on the homeland since 9/11 which i've said many times is the best argument against my view that we are at "war" with "islam."

i am not all broke out with genius, i can be obsessive-compulsive like my father who never got over his own "inordinate" fear that another economic depression was right around a corner that our economy never did turn. i admit to being "often wrong, always certain."

being a democrat is so much a part of my self-image. i was, and am, alone in that affiliation in my family. i have never voted for a republican for president, never voted for a republican for anything, except once for congress when the democrat was an eccentric, hapless nobody who the democrats had to nominate because they had a line on the ballot.

but 9/11 changed me, maybe it warped me. that was the view at any rate of my ex-wife. but i can't help how i feel. i've read enough, i've talked enough, i've written enough about this issue. count me among those who are "addicted to 9/11," who were changed by it, and who are on the side of those in this polarized country who believe in their hearts that we are at war.


-benjamin harris