There is some concern that this is creeping towards invasion of privacy. That may or may not be, but cameras that talk back to ne’er-do-wells in public areas aren’t necessarily a bad thing. In a society at its best, people would be restrained by their neighbors directly, I suppose. I think this is the next best thing to that. In Orwell’s 1984, the cameras are in each and every home. Such interference with individuals, families, and churches and such would be an unacceptable invasion. But appealing to one’s sense of shame in a truly public place to prevent bad behavior is not a bad thing at all.

“Battle” really is the best term for what’s going on at the border between Israel and Lebanon right now. Here’s why: the word “war” is horribly overused these days, and it’s pretty annoying. Wars used to be big things, executed over long periods of time by great powers. In our time, the word has been deflated so much that its used to describe a stiff competition between two gas stations to lower prices and attract customers. In our politically correct era, spineless journalists call the smallest armed skirmish a “war” so that they can advance a pacifist agenda in the newspapers. But as Thomas Seoul has pointed out, this doesn’t help at all; indeed, pacifists, when they are listened to, help make wars more horrible than they would have been otherwise. See, I agree with Norman Podhoretz: This is the first rumblings of the Fourth World War. [Newt Gingrich is only partially right: this is going to be a world war, but WWIII was actually what we currently know as the Cold War, consisting of many battles, including the Battle of Berlin, the Battle of Korea, and the Battle of Vietnam].

President Bush used this very proper terminology for the first time in his much-maligned “Mission Accomplished” speech. But take away the photo-ops and what some might think of as premature triumphalism, and the speech is an accurate picture of the long view of the War on Terror:

The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 — and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the “beginning of the end of America.” By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation’s resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a Special Operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al Qaeda killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al Qaeda’s senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th — the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got.

And again:

The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide. No act of the terrorists will change our purpose, or weaken our resolve, or alter their fate. Their cause is lost. Free nations will press on to victory.

President Bush’s administration continued to speak in these terms through the summer until September 24th of that same year, after which I think election year politics caught up with them and they felt the need to attenuate their rhetoric. It may have been necessary to tone things down at the time to win re-election in order to see to it that the War on Terror continued and wasn’t dismantled or flubbed under an incompetent Democrat, but I think that it’s time to bring the proper terms back into the public discussion. The President may not want to use such terms to avoid inflaming passions on the side of the Islamists and their convenient idiots on the left, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be used.

So let us pray that in the War on Terror, the Battle of Lebanon goes well, and thank God that the Battles of Iraq and Afghanistan went as well as they did (or if you like, “are going as well as they are.”). Nobody knows what the future battles of this war will look like, but let us hope that this Fourth World War continues to go as well as it has thus far.

Phew! Okay, I didn’t mean to stay up so late writing that, but like I said, sometimes you just have to let these things run their course. For a more measured view of these things, see:

World War What? – James Pinkerton, TCS Daily

No Gulf country wants a nuclear Iran, but neither do they need another Gulf war. All of which leaves Washington policymakers to consider a hybrid solution: encouraging an internal uprising against the Iranian theocracy buttressed by the threat of unprecedented use of force with a new class of U.S. weapons that would selectively but completely destroy Iran’s nuclear capabilities. Tehran has masterfully conducted a destabilizing guerilla war against U.S. interests in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is time for Washington and its allies to return the favor by enabling an equally capable insurgency force to rise up inside Iran — students, average workers on the street, even sympathetic police forces and army officers — to coalesce into a truly revolutionary force aimed at overthrowing the clerics. The insurgency force could target Iran’s vital infrastructure systems. Shutting down parts of Tehran’s electricity grid, or having truckers stall their vehicles en masse on Tehran’s streets, or flooding Iran’s airwaves with radio messages, or taking over rail lines moving critical supplies to Iran’s military and nuclear installations could all play a role in unnerving the clerics while creating the conditions that would bring hundreds of thousands of demonstrators out into the streets of Iran’s biggest cities. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of November 2004, or Georgia’s Rose Revolution of November 2003, would pale in comparison to what is bubbling up under Iran’s theocratic veil. The ensuing bloodless revolution would give Iran back to its people, free the world of its maddened rulers’ nuclear threats, and enable the West to help build Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in a verifiable and accountable way, much in the same way that the U.S. has agreed to assist India. Iran would also then be free to pursue what is innately ingrained in the minds of its people — democracy, freedom, and liberty for all.