Not a war on terror, but wars on terror. A deep, interesting discussion of terrorism, nationhood, law, political structures and war.
Bobbit’s professional focus is Constitutional Law. His faculty page is here, his book here. A NY Times review here, (a pretty good job), which has the last lines:
“There is also a tragic consciousness overshadowing it, evident in the fragments of poetry Mr. Bobbitt cites throughout. He quotes St. Augustine, calling the looming task “mournful work”: “sustaining relative good in the face of greater evil.”
**It might be worth revisiting, whatever the outcome of the Boston Marathon Bombing, and how we proceed.
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Addition: Freedom and security. Ross Douthat has an interesting post here (with a sobering link to Richard Clarke’s 2005 piece imagining a 2nd wave of Al Qaeda attacks):
‘It would be difficult, no doubt, for even a highly effective terrorist organization to pull off atrocities like yesterday’s bombing — carried out against a high profile target in a major city, with cops and security cameras all around — on a consistent basis without getting rolled up fairly quickly. But I agree with James Joyner and Megan McArdle: In a country as vast as the U.S.A., where Israeli-style security measures would be unmanageable and unimaginable, a highly effective terror campaign (as opposed to the lone-wolf one-offs we’ve experienced) wouldn’t require genius planning, massive amounts of capital, or highly sophisticated material; it would just require guns, crude bombs and (crucially) manpower.’