Posted on 09/12/2001 9:31:00 AM PDT by Paul L. Hepperla
[CAPITALISMMAGAZINE.COM] In the past, the United States has always tried to be "proportional" in its response to terrorism. A terrorist group blows up a U.S. embassy somewhere, and we make a measured response: We blow up a terrorist training base or we hit a bomb factory. And that, we say, is that. Does this impress the terrorists? Does it scare them? Does it deter them? No, of course not.
The terrorists play by one set of rules, and we play by another. They blow up an airliner full of innocent civilians, and we huff and puff for years trying to bring some of the low-level perpetrators to trial. The terrorist attack is always as massive and horrific as the terrorists can manage. The purpose of terrorism, after all, is to create terror.
But the U.S. response is always muted and as "surgical" as it can be.
Why? Because we are the good guys, we say. And this is one way you can tell the good guys from the bad.
Now, terrorists have launched a highly coordinated, highly skilled, highly successful mass attack on the United States, blowing up the World Trade Center, setting the Pentagon on fire, hijacking civilians and killing thousands. As I type this, we do not know who the perpetrators are. We do know that about three weeks ago, arch-terrorist Osama bin Laden bragged that he would make "a huge and unprecedented attack" on the United States.
People are saying this attack is another Pearl Harbor. Actually, it is far worse. Pearl Harbor was a military target; the World Trade Center was a civilian one. We knew who attacked Pearl Harbor; we do not know who attacked New York and Washington.
President Bush immediately pledged to "hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts." But the United States always says that. We always talk about a war against terrorism, but we never actually make war on terrorism.
If this is now to be war, however, then we must make it a war. And our armed response to it must be prolonged, repeated, devastating and non-proportional. (Were the atom bombs we dropped on Japan proportional to Pearl Harbor? Hardly. Some 2,403 U.S. servicemen and civilians died at Pear Harbor. In Hiroshima, the United States killed 118,661, and at Nagasaki we killed 73,884.)
Terrorist groups live somewhere. They are trained somewhere. They plan somewhere. They get money and arms funneled to them somewhere. That somewhere must be our target. The nations that hide terrorists, that give aid and comfort to terrorists, must be prepared to be destroyed in response.
Yes, innocent civilians will die. Just as innocent civilians died in the Allied bombing raids in Hamburg and Dresden; just as innocent civilians died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That is what war is. We need world leaders to say to terrorists, "No you cannot use my country for sanctuary, because then my people, my palace, my family, my life may be destroyed in return."
Shortly after the attacks on New York and Washington, a U.S. leader said: "These were not just crimes against the United States, they are acts of war. We will prevail in this war, as we have prevailed in the past. May God bless us in this trial, defend us, and make our justice swift and sure." That was not President Bush talking. That was John McCain issuing a statement. McCain, a war veteran, knows war when he sees it.
Can we still be the good guys? Yes, our goal is still peace and democracy and freedom from fear for the whole world. But sometimes we need to show we can play just as rough as the bad boys.
Because if the attack of Sept. 11 has taught us anything, it has taught us that sometimes good guys don't just finish last, they finish dead.
COPYRIGHT 2001 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
I surely agree, but I will believe it when I see the bombs raining down. We have heard tough words before, with little action. I hope we are ruthless and relentless, as you say. Maybe this attack will make things different. I hope so. I will say, however, that getting a few terrorists will be insuffcient. We need to strike as ferociously as Israel does, and thousands of dead bodies will be required.
Real soldiers know, that in war, you don't try to equal what the other guy did to you. You try to MASH him in such a way that he will never recover to do you more harm.
What is so difficult to understand about this?
Yesterday's events were entirely different- and infinitely worse. These attacks were carried out by faceless "terrorists", and designed specifically to kill as many inniocent people as possible, and to make any effective retaliation very difficult.
It is definitely time for what the management consultants used to call a "paradigm shift"- this is not a series of unconnected attacks which can be punished under any legal system, but rather these are all battles in a war- a war that we are currently LOSING!
The short attention span of the American people makes it hard to get it through their heads that the Marines in Lebanon, Lockerbie, and a dozen other attacks with loss of American lives are part of the same war. It's time to wake up and fight as though our national survival depended on it- because it really does.
The rationalization given for A-bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which is still controversial) has always been that it was necessary to avoid even greater casualty tolls projected in an invasion of Japan. There is no similar excuse that can be made today. When the guilty terrorists (probably Bin Laden and his Taliban hosts) are identified, the U.S. has ample military resources to exact highly-focused vengeance on them.
Sometimes "collateral damage" is unavoidable, when innocent people are used as hostages or human shields or are trapped in a war zone. In those cases one should try to minimize the collateral damage, but ultimately the moral responsibility lies with the hostage takers. It's a difficult dilemma, and one any sane person would hope to avoid.
Why in the world would you want to kill other innocent civilians because some madmen have also killed innocent civilians?
My analogy is that terrorism is like weeds. You CANNOT protect your yard enough to prevent weeds from coming in . . . the best you can do is eliminate them once they pop up and perhaps eliminate them from surrounding areas. Our response of "tightening" security only seems aimed at appeasing our fears - deviants will find a way to circumvent them no matter how thorough. That said, we need to muster some national resolve for unsavory things.
My recollection is that the Israelis have operated under the premise that terrorism will only stop when the costs to perpetrators becomes too high. If the perpetrators are committed to death for their purposes, our killing them obviously isn't an unbearable cost. That's where the unsavory part comes in.
I saw a post about spraying Afghans with pig products. Interesting . . . but weird. Eliminating families has been a historical tactic for inflicting unbearable costs. Likewise torture (though once again, Islamic terrorists' willingness to die renders this less useful).
I don't believe killing or capturing and sentencing those involved in yesterday's events will significantly dissuade future terrorists. We must make the costs unbearable and worse than death.
How can we use anything less than a nuclear weapon in response?
I hope that Bush has more courage than his father.
We are going to get bloody before this is over, and I hope he can take the heat.
SENTINEL=Disappointed Gulf War TOW Gunner
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