Tony Blair is testifying again in a British inquiry into the decision-making leading up to the Iraq War.  I read Blair’s book My Journey over Xmas.  Blair on the logic of terrorism in the Ireland Chapter:

The response [to a terrorist attack] is often to clamp down in a way that alienates the peacemakers as well as the terrorists…The problem is the moment such a course is taken, the keys to the process are put in the hand of the terrorists.  Their purpose is to lock up the process. That’s the sick rationale behind the terror.

This kind of idea is related to a paper I have with Tomas Sjöström.  Blair on the right response to 9/11:

There was no other course; no other option; no alternative path.  It was war.  It had to be fought and won.

Applying his earlier analysis, we might conclude that this is what the terrorists actually want and if we go to war we give them the keys to the peace process.  Blair goes on to say the war on terror would have to be a different kind of war, “a battle for and about the ideas and values that would shape the 21st century.”  But actually, we have more conventional wars going on still.  There may be some way to make Blair’s two points consistent: When should we respond to terrorist attacks with aggressiveness and when should we resist the impulse to overreact?  I did not find a clear answer in the book.  Nevertheless, in the end, I was glad I read the book.  The chapter on Ireland is very interesting.  And the book is written in an engaging and informal style:

We also has an unfortunate run-in with Britain’s pensioners.  One of the greatest myths of human existence is that as people get older, they get more benign…Your average Rottweiler on speed can be a lot more amiable that a pensioner wronged… Visiting a housing development..I caught sight of an old-age pensioner, a woman so less, with a placard that read: “Blair, you are a c**t.”…. I was really shocked.  She looked like your typical sweet granny.  I almost stopped to remonstrate and then wisely thought better of it.