On the morning of September 11, 2001, a friend and colleague called to tell me that she would not be coming to the meeting scheduled for 10 AM at our offices because "we were at war." I had been watching the same dreadful scenes as she, but had reached a different conclusion: we had been attacked, yes; but war is something different. When the then-President of the Aspen Institute belatedly gathered the staff of our DC office and delivered the same message as my friend, I cringed. Maybe it was the years of Susan Bales/ George Lakoff style research that we had commissioned, but my first reaction was: these are criminals, not warriors. And framing the issue as "war" constrained our options for response, right from the beginning.

Framing terrorists as criminals was frequently and derisively dismissed by advocates of the Iraq war - especially during election campaigns. But it has never been completely absent from the public debate. Now comes retired General Wes Clark - tough to characterize as a military-hating peacenik - with a nicely reasoned case for distinguishing combatants from criminals.

Is it too late to turn back and re-frame? As many of us directionally challenged folks just back from long vacation trips know, every mile down the wrong road means that much longer before we are on the right path.