got that right.......................

 

     The war against terrorism is not, strictly speaking, a war against nations, even though it has already involved international war in Afghanistan and presidential threats against other nations.  This is a war against "the embittered few"—"thousands of trained terrorists"—who are "at large" among many thousands, and even millions of others who are, in the language of this document, "innocents," and thus deserving of our protection.

     Hunting these terrorists down will be like combing lice out of a head of hair.  Unless we are willing to kill innocents in order to kill the guilty—unless we are willing to blow our neighbor's head off, or blow our own head off, to get rid of the lice—the need to be lethal will be impeded constantly by the need to be careful.  Because of the inherent difficulties and because we must suppose a new supply of villains to be always in the making, we can expect the war on terrorism to be more or less endless, endlessly costly and endlessly supportive of a thriving bureaucracy.

-Wendell Berry, Citizenship Papers, 2003, containing the essay, A Citizen's Response