Scale matters. A Declaration of War would be in order if a terrorist group committed the "crime" of killing everyone on Long Island, right? You really like loony hypotheticals. We are not dealing with that situation, nor are we likely to be. A declaration of war would be nice, if we were going to have a war. Unfortunarely that clause of the Constitution has been sidelined. Ina ny eveny, whether military action was in ordere doesn't depend solely or even mainly on the scale of the attack. Germany hadn't done much to us when we declared war in WWII. Whether war would be a good idea depends on a lot of things. In the case of al Qaida, it doesn't do any good. It's like shooting bees. Knowing that any war is bound to unleash some horrors doesn't entail that we excuse all the horrors of a given war. Some utilitarian, you. The horrors are excused if the benefits in welfare outweigh the costs, according to you. So you must think they do in this war. So you justify them. Me, I don't. WWII was different. The Nazis were tilerably close to shitting out the lights all over the world. Dredsen and Rotterdam were wrong, but it was worth even that to stop them. Al Quaida is scum, but they're not thats ort of menace. jks
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