If making war on terrorists were simple, the forces of the I.R.A. and E.T.A. would have been smoked out and hunted down long ago. But terrorist organizations are not nation-states that can be vanquished in conventional war. To have defeated the I.R.A. in the 1970's, the British government would have had to adopt policies — like the internment of all Republican suspects — that could not easily have been reconciled with liberal ideas of justice. Nor should it be forgotten that the lion's share of the money that financed the I.R.A. campaign of violence came from the United States. Not even the most extreme Unionists were prepared to bomb Boston in retaliation.
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