ABSTRACT
I was opposed to the war in Afghanistan for both ethical and strategic reasons. In the forums and teach-ins in which I participated after the terrorist acts, I wanted more than anything else to respect the dignity of the dead and the profundity of the mourning to which the dead called us. Indeed, I still try to heed that call for mourning and the future it promises because it recognizes the dignity of the dead, those who died on September 11, most certainly, but also those who have died as a result of the infinite war on terror. Like many who opposed the war, I expected the political scientist Richard Falk to support a solution to the threat posed by Al-Qaeda that did not include military action against Afghanistan. After all, Richard Falk has devoted his intellectual and political life to defending the ideal of humane global governance. He has been a life-long anti-militarist. Yet Falk supported the U.S. war against Afghanistan as a just war. Shortly after September 11, he wrote in The Nation magazine that “I have never since my childhood supported a shooting war in which the United States was involved.”1 But in the same article he goes on to claim that “[t]he war in Afghanistan against apocalyptic terrorism qualifies in my understanding as the first truly just war since World War II.”2
