Why We Can’t Win The War On Terrorism With Defense

by John Hawkins | September 4, 2003 4:41 pm

I want you to think back to the three worst terrorist attacks worldwide since 9/11…

— There was the Bali bombing at a couple of packed nightclubs.
— 100+ Iraqis died in a bombing at a mosque.
— More than a 1000 Russians were put in a hostage situation at a theater.

Notice that those aren’t exactly the sexy targets that we worry so much about. No dirty bombs, no crashing planes into buildings, no attacks on nuclear plants — yet, the terrorists did tremendous damage.

Now just consider all the targets in our country that might feature hundreds of potential victims gathered together with almost no security. High school football and basketball games, theaters, churches, crowded restaurants, movie theaters, on and on and on. There are literally tens of thousands of places terrorists could attack & kill hundreds with little chance of being stopped by onsite security.

Furthermore, as we all know. It’s EASY to get into the United States illegally. Tens of millions of people have just waltzed over our vast, poorly guarded borders, and once you’re in it’s a snap to get anywhere you want to go in our country.

Given all that, doesn’t it become obvious that we can’t win the war on terrorism by staying on defense? John Ashcroft and company have done an absolutely marvelous job of preventing terrorist attacks so far and I salute them for it, but what they’re doing simply isn’t going to cut it long-term EVEN if we pass new laws & increase spending and personnel. The area they have to guard is simply too large.

That’s why we have to hit the terrorists on THEIR home ground, where THEY live. Only by going to the terrorists home turf and locking them up or better yet killing them, will we force them to go to ground and spend their time trying to figure out how to survive until tomorrow instead of coming here to attack Americans. If we allow the terrorists to have the same sort of safe haven they had in Afghanistan, in Syria or Iran for example, then we will LOSE the war on terrorism. Only by staying on the offensive and going after the terrorists AND the nations that sponsor them can we have any hope of destroying these organizations before they costs tens of thousands, and perhaps hundreds of thousands or even millions of American lives one day in a nuclear or biological attack.

That’s what people like Howard Dean & so many of his ilk on the anti-war left either don’t understand or don’t want to accept. If we don’t use our military and our intelligence agencies, if we don’t go after these terrorists supporting states and force them to get out of the business or bring them down, the price our country will pay will be catastrophic. We are at war here and we can’t just hunker down and hope it’ll blow over. It’ll end only if we’re willing to do what it takes, for as long as it takes, to end. There is a lot of blood yet to be shed in the war on terrorism, the question is how much bleeding is left to do and where it’s going to be done. The more terrorists we kill in the Middle-East (including in Iraq), the less of them there will be alive to kill Americans back home — and that suits me just fine.

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