Editor’s Page

Around the world, right now, leftists of all sorts are engaged in arguments about the use of force. In our last issue, we focused on the question of humanitarian intervention, and all our writers, though they were a very diverse group, argued for the necessity of a military response to genocide and ethnic cleansing. In this issue, we are publishing a group of articles that address the question of what happens after the killing fields have, one way or another, been shut down. How can some form of political order be restored? How can justice be done? Who are the restorers and doers? Whose voice and hand should be authoritative? And how can the rest of us help? We can’t answer all these questions, only begin to think about them. For anyone who supports the use of force (sometimes), they are necessary questions. Once you intervene, you take on responsibilities.

September 11 raised a set of different but parallel questions, requiring a similar intellectual/political engagement. Terrorism is one way of using force; the “war against terrorism” is another. I am sure that there are alternatives to the first: even the fiercest and most fanatical of religious zealots can pursue their goals without planning mass murder. There are no excuses for terrorism; along with Benjamin Ross, I even doubt that there are any “root causes,” at least in the standard left use of that term, where a supposedly deep understanding of where the terrorists are coming fr...