This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, May 26, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

The War on Terror is a sticky term, but not just because it evokes thoughts of a serious effort,

but also because it implies certain tools, like the military.

But the uses of the military and fighting terrorism are few.

We need to be careful in applying the war metaphor to an effort that will likely go on and on.

So says Chris Preble, Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Cato Institute and editor

of the new Cato Book, terrorizing ourselves.

Our primary concern in dealing with terrorism as people who live in the United States

is the fact that we live here and that tends to limit the ability of using the US military to fight terrorism, doesn't it?

Well, if you think of terrorism as a domestic security problem, as a homeland security problem,

than the other other there are even

some pretty good laws that inhibit the ability of the military to to deal with

terrorism here in in the United States on our own shores.

Of course, that's not how we think about fighting terrorism.

We think about fighting in a proactive way overseas, far away from where, far away from

our shores, several degrees of separation away.

And we've seen some successes and some failures

over the last nine or ten years since 9-11. I think most people look at the initial

intervention in Afghanistan as being a appropriate use of force. We did much of

what we set out to do we disrupted the al-Qaeda

training camps we drove the Taliban from power we sent a message to everybody

else it's a bad thing don't do it again that's good but then we had the

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