Winning The War On Terrorism

We can win the war in Afghanistan!

How many conquerors and nations throughout history have made that proclamation only to find that, thousands of casualties later, they were sadly mistaken. And now, as the death toll of American soldiers continues to escalate, it makes you wonder if maybe we aren't being led down the same path toward destruction.

Maybe it's having a son of military service age that puts it in perspective for me, I don't know, but the bottom line is I don't want any of our children to continue to be needlessly killed or maimed in Afghanistan. Continuing to use the same ground force tactics will only lead to protracted warfare that will serve only to cost the American people thousands of lives of their young men and women and billions of dollars that could be better spent to help Americans during the economic nightmare that has settled over our country.

And what do we get for our sacrifices to this endless bloodshed? Peace of mind? Does anyone really believe that eradicating Al Quaida from one country is going to quell the march of terror that is their radical religion? No, I think we can all agree that these Muslim extremists are here to stay. Even as we fight them on the battlefields today, more are being born and indoctrinated into this "holy jihad" life as we speak. They are already all over the world, including the United States, just waiting for the signal to poison water and food supplies, destroy infrastructure and cause economic chaos.

Only through good fortune and the efforts of our intelligence community have we been spared more 9/11 type attacks. I believe it is paramount that we Americans maintain our diligence and expand our efforts so that we can ferret out these terrorists from our midst and upset their plans at killing more innocent people. One way to reduce the threat is to uncover where the terrorist's safe houses are located, close down mosques, businesses and schools that give aid and shelter to these fiends, and imprison those that aid their cause. Exposing these terrorist cells and breaking up their support networks is key to defeating them and protecting ourselves.

I have to agree that withdrawing our troops will ultimately only lead to bolstering the confidence of Al Quaeda and the Taliban in their efforts to launch new attacks at the U.S. and it's allies using Afghanistan as their host country. So what can we do? I know a lot of people on our radical fringe have a solution they feel will suffice. They say, "We should just find out where they are and drop a friggin' nuke on them sum' bitches and send 'em all to Allah!" Yeah. That's a great plan. If only it were just that easy. Let's just invite them all to stand on a bullseye in the middle of the desert and tell them we are taking a group portrait by satellite, then just vaporize the lot. Yeah. Some people should just stick to whittlin' and leave the thinking to others.

We find ourselves in a classic Catch-22 situation where we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. There's no question in my mind that the threat of terrorism needs to end, and quickly. And my feeling is that we cannot succeed on our own because, as we proved in Vietnam, the American government will eventually withdraw their support of an unpopular war. We need help from the other super-powers if we are to prevail in this struggle.

Not surprisingly, despite the global implications if the war on terror were to fail, the U.S. military is basically on its own to fight and die to protect not just our country, but the rest of the world as well, with little or no help from the rest of the world's military. I guess the Russians still have a bad taste in their mouths from their earlier attempts at war with Afghanistan and the Chinese are more interested in sitting this one out than sparing any of their two million troops for the cause. Where is Genghis Khan when you need him? Seriously, it will take a lot more manpower (more than our country could muster) and the concerted efforts of combined military might to rout these insurgents from their caves and mountain strongholds and finally bring peace to this region.

I know that this opinion won't be shared by many of my more liberal friends and readers, but then I tend to be choosy about my dogma and have no use for those that "follow the party line" rather than their own feelings. We all want to believe that "peace in our time" is an attainable goal, but like most worthwhile things, it does come with a cost.

Hopefully it won't take another 9/11 or death squads of suicide bombers walking into our children's classrooms and detonating their devices to get the attention of a nation that has lost its focus on terrorism with the current distraction of our participation in Iraq's civil war.