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thedrifter
10-11-05, 06:24 AM
War Without End
Written by Bob Parks
Tuesday, October 11, 2005

No matter how many times it's brought up, one still has to marvel at the legendarily short attention span of the American people and those who use that short span for their own purposes when referring to the War on Terror. For some out there, here is a brief review of some of the more notables incidents, courtesy of the State Department:

Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Homeland, September 11, 2001: Two hijacked airliners crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Soon thereafter, the Pentagon was struck by a third hijacked plane. A fourth hijacked plane, suspected to be bound for a high-profile target in Washington, crashed into a field in southern Pennsylvania. The attacks killed 3,025 U.S. citizens and other nationals. President Bush and Cabinet officials indicated that Usama Bin Laden was the prime suspect and that they considered the United States in a state of war with international terrorism. In the aftermath of the attacks, the United States formed the Global Coalition Against Terrorism.

Attack on U.S.S. Cole, October 12, 2000: In Aden, Yemen, a small dingy carrying explosives rammed the destroyer U.S.S. Cole, killing 17 sailors and injuring 39 others. Supporters of Usama Bin Laden were suspected.

U.S. Embassy Bombings in East Africa, August 7, 1998: A bomb exploded at the rear entrance of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, killing 12 U.S. citizens, 32 Foreign Service Nationals (FSNs), and 247 Kenyan citizens. Approximately 5,000 Kenyans, 6 U.S. citizens, and 13 FSNs were injured. The U.S. Embassy building sustained extensive structural damage. Almost simultaneously, a bomb detonated outside the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 7 FSNs and 3 Tanzanian citizens, and injuring 1 U.S. citizen and 76 Tanzanians. The explosion caused major structural damage to the U.S. Embassy facility. The U.S. Government held Usama Bin Laden responsible.

Khobar Towers Bombing, June 25, 1996: A fuel truck carrying a bomb exploded outside the US military's Khobar Towers housing facility in Dhahran, killing 19 U.S. military personnel and wounding 515 persons, including 240 U.S. personnel. Several groups claimed responsibility for the attack.

The list, incidentally, is quite long. We only hear about the more impressive bombings that involve European tourists or major metropolitan acreage. But these terrorists seem to not only enjoy killing Americans, but to cause any mass death that will give them the publicity they crave. So the big question: how do we end this terrorism?

I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce terrorism, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, abort every Muslim extremist in this world, and your terrorism rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your terror rate would go down. So these far-out, far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Couldn't resist....

Obviously, to the sheer denial of the left, sitting down and talking with them won't work. We've all witnessed “the word” of terrorists in Israel. Every time the Israelis came to some kind of truce, cease fire, “peace”, the Palestinians would send in another suicide bomber, set of another car bomb, or launch a few mortars into the most densely populated areas possible. So as much as there liberals who think a nice chit chat would smooth things out, are there any volunteers?

In fact, we've all heard the complaints, the chants, the slogans, the laments, and the demands from everyone from Cindy Sheehan to Barbara Lee, yet they offer no solutions. These self-centered types seem to have no realization that terrorists would target them, then again, why would they? Liberal mouthpieces are doing more for terrorist morale than setting off a dirty nuke in Atlanta.

Last week, President Bush gave a speech at the National Endowment for Democracy. Some say the speech was lame, others used the word “brilliant”. In my opinion, he just told it like it was.

“All these separate images of destruction and suffering that we see on the news can seem like random and isolated acts of madness. Innocent men and women and children have died simply because they boarded the wrong train or worked in the wrong building or checked into the wrong hotel.

“And while the killers choose their victims indiscriminately, their attacks serve a clear and focused ideology, a set of beliefs and goals that are evil but not insane.

“Some call this evil Islamic radicalism. Others militant jihadism.”

Some in this country call them the victims. Some here consider the United States the catalyst for evil in the world. Just saw yet another relative of a fallen soldier here in Massachusetts, interviewed, and asking the President where the Weapons of Mass Destruction were? Maybe we should again just come out and say it: our young men and women are stupid, brainwashed kids, who just signed up to get a skill from the military and had no idea that the US Army and Marine Corps actually intended to send them into a war zone.

continued...

thedrifter
10-11-05, 06:24 AM
Even though they are over 18, they really don't know what going into the military entails. After all, no one can be smarter than a liberal, and to them, the military is always evil. Even to our own.

How should we fight this war?

First of all if it were up to me, I would expel all embedded reporters from the war zone. Despite the egos of our journalist class, our latest enemy's bullets don't swerve around people with press credentials. Especially with political correctness removing the word “terrorist” from certain press outlet spell checks, getting agenda-driven news off the air is essential.

It's more than apparent that when we injure an enemy combatant, make his stay unpleasant in a detention area, or kill a civilian he's hiding behind, the press makes us out to be the bad guys. Just look at the strategic use and implications of the words “occupation” vice “liberation.” Wars, at least my understanding of them, are fought to win. I don't believe we are doing so.

In our politicized attempt to be the nice guys, we've forgotten how to fight a war. Because we are fighting an enemy who choses to avoid the battlefield and instead shoot at us from some family's kitchen, we've forgotten how to fight a war. Because the media will reduce the innocent victims of improvised explosive devices to numbers, and elevate the Abu Ghraib prisoners-turned-victims into heroes.

Don't get me wrong; prisoner abuse is illegal and rightly so. But should any of our young people get captured by Al Qaeda, do we really expect them to be shown dignity and respect? Do we really expect the same “people” who cut alive and kicking civilian's heads off with large kitchen knives to adhere to the hallowed tenets of the Geneva Convention?

In order to win this war and get it over with, our military must be unencumbered by a media that's turned this conflict into a Michael Mann movie where the good guys and bad guys are equally misunderstood, yet sympathetic. This is an “us” versus “them” scenario if ever they was one, and the war will drag out as long as our media, and celebrity military and foreign affairs experts give the terrorists justification. When liberals call George Bush a Nazi or war criminal, I'd bet that Abu Musab al Zarqawi agrees. One must be careful of the company one keeps. Bush reminds us....

“Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, 'We will either we achieve victory over the human race or we will pass to the eternal life.'

“And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history. Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously, and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply.”

We've heard the expression that the military is fighting with their hands tied behind their backs. For all the Sheehans out there who claim to be trying to end the war, all they are really doing is making the war drag out. Instead of our military being allowed to do what they do best: clean house, they are being asked to fight a nice war: a war the liberals and the press can tolerate.

We should be kicking ass in mass quantity.

Instead, we are fighting an enemy abroad and within. Now don't get me wrong; we should never start rounding up some of our neighbors, but do they really believe anti-war marches led by a few Gold Star moms don't give Al Qaeda a morale boost? Do we really believe that the words of Dave Matthews and Susan Sarandon don't resonate positively in Arabic?

While we have some at home who gloss over victims of terror and blame us, the President reminds of who we are fighting against.

“We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan and many others. In a courtroom in the Netherlands, the killer of Theo Van Gogh turned to the victim's grieving mother and said, 'I do not feel your pain because I believe you are an infidel.'

“And in spite of this veneer of religious rhetoric, most of the victims claimed by the militants are fellow Muslims. When 25 Iraqi children are killed in a bombing or Iraqi teachers are executed at their school or hospital workers are killed caring for the wounded, this is murder, pure and simple; the total rejection of justice and honor and moral and religion.

“These militants are not just the enemies of America or the enemies of Iraq, they are the enemies of Islam and the enemies of humanity.”

We've attempted to imprison a young soldier for shooting a wounded terrorist who he thought may have been hiding a small bomb to kill everyone in the room they were in. This just after his witnessing a fellow soldier die in that same manner. We've attempted to indict all soldiers monitoring enemy combatants in detention, even though those very detainees would slit our throats given the slightest opportunity.

Some call George Bush a terrorist and a hypocrite because he hasn't sent his daughters to the war zone. However, he's never asked anyone to tell their kid who has enlisted voluntarily to become a fugitive and run away to Canada. Bush, at least, wants to win, not flee. Some don't agree....

Senator Edward Kennedy said "His 'bring it on' attitude hasn't worked, and such statements can only goad Al Qaeda into trying harder.”

To Senator Kennedy, what's your plan?

Nancy Pelosi, Democrat Leader of the House of Representatives chimed in, "The President went into Iraq under a false premise, without a plan, and has totally mismanaged our involvement. Now he is trying to justify his actions with a series of excuses."

To Congresswoman Pelosi, what's your plan?

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said the President "has offered America a false choice, between resolve and retreat."

To Senator, Durbin, what's your plan?

Fred Kaplan of Slate added, “President Bush's speech this morning, billed as a major statement about Iraq and the war on terror, was a sad spectacle—so ripe with lofty principles, so bereft of ideas on what to do with them. He approached the podium amid growing disapproval of his performance as a war president, ratcheting chaos and violence in Iraq, continuing terrorist attacks worldwide—and pleaded for nothing more than staying the course, with no turns or shifts, for a long, long time to come.”

And to Mr. Kaplan, what's your plan?

In none of the above statements of disagreement from our left are there suggestions, plans, or options. That would take balls. Instead we just get complaints and whining. They're almost like bin Laden who works everyone else up, then sits back and lets them do the dirty work. I'd really like to know, besides get out of Iraq so the world will like us again, what the plan against terror from the left is?

As they have been the sole consistent ally of Al Qaeda in America, I believe the left could negotiate a “peace”. After all, the terrorists owe a lot to Cindy Sheehan, even if she is only a woman. They owe a lot to Reuters, Pierce Brosnan, Dan Rather, Jessica Lange, Jon Stewart, Steven Bochco, Sean Penn, CAIR, Democracy Now! and Air America. Osama may want to infuse Air America with some cash as they may soon go under....

But unless, after all the time that's gone by since we first LIBERATED Iraq, helped them have real elections, write a democracy-style constitution, rebuild their infrastructure, liberals define a strategy, their opinions should be considered irrelevant. *****ing may call attention to, but seldom solve a problem without solutions.

To win the war on terror, we must want to. Doing a Spain won't cut it. Should we just up and leave Iraq with the work unfinished would mean the slaughter of millions by the fanatics. That fact doesn't seem to faze the left much, even though they try and come off as caring about the innocents.

Unfortunately, taking another hit may be the only way to get all of us on the same page again. Sad, but true.

About the Writer: Bob Parks is a versatile writer, activist, and political campaigner, who currently resides in Boston.

Ellie