Against Cruise Missles - Excuses for not taking serious action against our enemies.

What will be one quick way to determine whether the American response to yesterday's outrage is adequate?

Cruise missiles are a very nice weapon in the abstract, and even have important uses in this instance — primarily, I would think, as an instrument of assassination.

But, in general, over the years cruise missile attacks have become synonymous with symbolic pinprick strikes that are an excuse for not taking serious action against our enemies.

They have been made a tool of the sort of carefully calibrated warmaking that should have been forever discredited by Vietnam.

They have become a way to avoid ever-incurring American casualties in foreign engagements, even a way to avoid incurring casualties among our enemies — the perfect weapon with which to inflict deadly damage on empty warehouses in the dead of night.

Cruise missiles, in short, were the weapon of choice during America's long vacation from the imperatives of blood and steel that ended yesterday.

You can't turn on the TV without hearing some expert say that our enemies in the current conflict are elusive, that finding targets to punish and bomb and raze will be difficult or impossible. Nonsense.

We know the states that harbor our enemies. If only Osama bin Laden and his 50 closest advisers and followers die in the next couple of weeks, President Bush will have failed in a great military and moral challenge of his presidency.

The American response should be closer to something along these lines: identifying the one or two nations most closely associated with our enemies, giving them 24-hours notice to evacuate their capitals (in keeping with our desire to wage war as morally as possible), then systematically destroying every significant piece of military, financial, and political infrastructure in those cities.

Today in Manhattan, if you open your windows, you can smell the smoke from downtown, ever so slightly burning your eyes and your throat. People in the nations that empower our enemies should get a big whiff of such smoke.

Two of the greatest American warriors ever, William Sherman and George Patton, understood, as Victor Davis Hanson points out in his excellent book The Soul of Battle, that war could not just be waged against an enemy's army.

It had to waged against his infrastructure, his culture, and his will, it had to make the populace feel the pinch of the aggression it cheered from the sidelines — and this lesson is as applicable to southern belles in the Civil War as it is to the "Arab street" today.

So, by all means annihilate Osama bin Laden. But the task is much larger than that, and cruise missiles alone won't be equal to it.

Bravo! The terrorists who slammed themselves into the World Trade Center were ideological warriors, professional, brave and dedicated enemies of the United States willing to readily die for their cause. What needs to be asked is whether we Americans are willing to rise to the challenge and be willing to have our sons and daughters put into harm's way, to die bravely if necessary for democracy and freedom. Let our enemies see we too are warriors and their enemies come to put fear in their hearts and to finish off their capability hit this great nation ever again. And it deserves to be defended by great men and women up to the challenge as an earlier generation was in rising to meet the threat posed by Adolf Hitler.

If you have not already, read The Soul of Battle. OUTSTANDING BOOK! The will of the enemy must be so badly compromised, so reduced, that they will sue for peace. I re-read some of Black Hawk Down and how the Sammie gunners were hiding in crowds and how women who carried children tried to fire at US military forces. We had to respond with deadly force and non-combatants were killed. This will occur in this war and one of the goals of our society must be to show that when we respond, and the enemy hides among non-combatants, and the non-combatants do not discourage such conduct, that there may indeed be deaths of civilians.

Hello Freepers, This is my first post. I won't waste your time and bandwith on my insane dribble, but I have real fears about what is actually happening. Although I am a Conservative Republican and try to analyze everything before passing judgement, I have come to the opinion that this is far more serious than the original attacks yesterday. Bin Laden said several weeks ago he had something big planned. I would like to think that hindsight is always 20/20 and we see the fruit of his threat, but I am wondering if this is just the tip of the iceberg. I read somewhere that Ben Laden was helping Chechen fighters against the Russians and that he had possibly obtained tactical nuclear weapons from them in return for his services. I am alarmed at the possibility. First of all, I believe that no one would attack the U.S. in such a fashion without planning to carry the War to the next level. Anyone knows going into this that this act of terrorism would meet the most massive retaliation in World History. Knowing this going in, Whoever committed these atrocities, I believe would be capable of taking this whole thing to the next level. I may be crazy, I probably am. The events in the past day are making me crack, I am sure. I live in a town whose main industry is Military Aircraft, I have been told since I was a child that we were a Top 10 target for a Nuclear Attack. I live not far from these industries. Today at work, an Arab, possibly Iranian, came in and started services with my company. He was new to town. I find it kind of odd, I am just going nuts. Forgive me.

Damm right. I served this country in the military. I know what the soldiers, the sailors, the fighter pilots are feeling right now. Cruise missiles yes. But maybe 1/100 of our response. If I was still proudly wearing my uniform I would want to be in Afghanistan now. Bleep Colin Powell's calls for bringing Bin Laden to court. I don't want him in court. I don't want any scientific evidence of his DNA to still exist after we are through with him.

Relax, this attack, in spite of it's devastating success, was a low tech venture. The resources of these terrorists are not impressive. Their only apparent assets are a limitless supply of suicidal zealots and enough cash to train a few of them to fly into buildings. Oh, and some box-cutters and knives. Make no mistake, I'm not saying their plan wasn't ingenious, their coordination remarkable, and their ability to recruit so many lunatics with the ability to keep a secret surprising. All of that is true. But this sort of attack would never work a second time. It depended on our inability to concieve of such evil, and willingness of the hijacked passengers to believe that they wouldn't be harmed if they just cooperated. We will never be so easily fooled a second time.

"If I was still proudly wearing my uniform I would want to be in Afghanistan now."

The attacks will continue on a sporadic basis until M1A2s roll through the streets of Kabul. Thank GOD that clinton appointee Shinseki hasn't been around long enough to get rid of them all...

I too have had the eerie "calm before the storm" feeling in my gut. The mindset of a people who believe in their cause in the eyes of God cannot be underestimated IMHO. Our borders and defences have been compromised for far too long to dismiss the idea that there may be hundreds or thousands of such enemies living among us as i write this, waiting their turn to die for their cause. I too may be a liitle on the jumpy side these days, but if anyone can confirm or dispute such a scenario, the info would go along way towards easing the uncertainty either way. Locked & Loaded Gil

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