Michael Ignatieff, the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, has been a vocal advocate of the use of force to end human-rights violations in Bosnia and Kosovo. Now he’s providing the same bluntly realistic, mature, and measured perspective on fighting the global terrorist network.

Ignatieff’s voice has been much in demand over the past month and a half. Joining the knowledgeable eye of a historian to the critical one of a journalist, he’s offered his thoughtful analysis of the current crisis in essays that have appeared everywhere from the New York Times to the Guardian.

Ignatieff’s latest book is Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry (Princeton University Press), a well-timed compilation of lectures he gave at Princeton last year.

Q: Attorney General Ashcroft has said that in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, Americans may need to give up certain civil liberties. Do you think that the government has infringed on the civil liberties of the people who were rounded up after the attacks and are still detained?

A: If there isn’t a judicial review pretty soon, we’re looking at a violation of civil and political rights. We must live by our own rules. But let’s not play around here. The key issue is whether we can get judicial oversight. Or whether we’re turning it over completely to the FBI. We’ve got to get lawyers and human-rights people in there.

I don’t see any way around the problem that the enemy is, for the first time, literally in our midst. That does put us in a new world, and they’re bound to exploit our civil liberties. What do we do with detainees who keep totally silent? Eventually, we have to release them for lack of evidence.

Q: What do we have to do to win this war?

A: I think that victory has to have a military component. The next step is special operations, and special operations are bound to be dirty. We have to degrade the capacity of a terrorist to attack us. We have to degrade their capacity to contain the risk. And then we have to engage the Arab world and the Muslim world.

I can see the Northern Alliance taking Kabul. I can see the Taliban falling. And then I can see [really tackling] the humanitarian catastrophe. And I can see that by the spring.

The continued Israeli occupation, the continuing escalation of violence by Palestinians in the West Bank, is a root cause. What makes victory seem so distant is that peace in the Middle East is so distant.

We better have some war aims. And those should involve reconciliation with the Arab world, peace in the Middle East, building a security architecture in the Middle East. That’s a huge, huge program.

Q: Have your politics changed in the past month and a half?

A: No. I’m a believer in human rights who believes you have to use military force. I believe it in Bosnia and I believe it in Kosovo and I believe it now. I just think the position I’ve always criticized is that moral perfection that says we can never defend good principles with moral means that cost human lives. I just think there are some very difficult cases where principles don’t mean much unless you’re prepared to put lives on the line — your own and other people’s.

I don’t think my politics have changed. We really are faced with an attack that can only be met with determined, precise military force. Am I happy about that? No. Am I worried? You bet.

Ignatieff will read from Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry at 6 p.m. this Monday, November 5, in the Wiener Auditorium at the Kennedy School of Government, 79 JFK Street, Cambridge. Tickets can be obtained at the Harvard Book Store, 1256 Mass Ave, Cambridge. Call (617) 661-1515.

Issue Date: November 1 - 8, 2001