Editorial: War on Terror should have had finality

Thursday marks 13 years since the attacks of September 11, 2001; and as the intrepid Fred Gray points out this week, we aren’t doing too well in the struggle to win the War on Terror.

This column isn’t going to rehash the events of that fateful day. Suffice to say that your editor – and most Americans – are still angry about what happened. And rightly so.

Unfortunately, we find ourselves less free and less secure than we were on September 10, 2001. In the name of “security,” we have seen the size and scope of the federal government expand to the point where we allow ourselves to be violated at airports and think nothing of it as those we have entrusted with protecting us have turned their attention to collecting data from our own cell phones, making note of who we called, when we called them, and for how long.

The flagrant erosion of our privacy and civil rights have been foisted upon us equally by the Republicans and the Democrats. And while we’ve made spying on Americans our domestic war policy, the war overseas doesn’t seem to be any closer to resolution. Instead, we find ourselves further entangled in the hatreds that have kept the Middle East embroiled in unrest and discontentment for thousands of years.

What’s missing is finality. Like so many conflicts, the only way there will be lasting peace is when there is at last a clear and final winner. We’ve seen it throughout history. The North destroyed the South in the American Civil War. Before that, the United States marched all the way to Mexico City and captured the capital city to end the Mexican American War. And in the best example, Franklin Roosevelt declared that America would accept nothing less than the total and unconditional surrender of Japan in World War II. Clear winners, clear losers. That’s how you end a war.

That’s what’s laughable about Mideast “peace talks” or “truces.” They don’t solve the basic conflict, and they let smolder the hatred that is the underlying cause until it suddenly bursts back into flames.

For the US, we probably undertook the wrong tactic a long time ago, but we certainly did not react appropriately on September 12, 2001. So let’s rewind the clock for a moment, and install your humble editor as President of the United States, and I’ll tell you how I wish we had handled those trying times.

Start with the premise that we have a pretty simple foreign policy under the Estlack administration. You mind your business, and we’ll mind ours. We’ll stand by our allies if you mess with them; and if you ever attack the United States of America on our sovereign soil or our embassies overseas, we will destroy you. And by “destroy you,” I mean just that. We will come kill you, your old people, your women, and your children until the death toll reaches a point that you beg us to stop. None of our weapons are off limits to our use, and unconditional surrender is your only option after our Congress formally declares war on your sorry butt.

If that one paragraph had summed up our foreign policy in 2001 and prior, I think 9-11 probably would not have happened. But if it still happened, then our course of action would have become clear.

We’ll spend the afternoon and night of September 11 binding up our national wounds and taking care of our own. But when the sun rises on 9-12, a new world order would be in the offing. We knew who attacked us, we knew who planned it, and we knew which country was harboring that piece of human feces. After we ask Congress for a formal declaration of war on Afghanistan and the Taliban specifically and Islamic Terrorists in general, my first call that morning would have been to the leaders of Afghanistan: “You have 24 hours to deliver to our embassy – alive or dead – Osama bin Laden and his top lieutenants. If you don’t, then may Allah have mercy on your souls because we are going to unleash nuclear Armageddon on you and your people. The clock is ticking.”

The next calls are to Russia and China to tell them we expect to be launching a few “drones” in the form of ICBMs in less than 24 hours; and if they know what’s good for them, they just need to stay the hell out of it.

The clock ticks down. We probably don’t get a delivery, and we hit the button and then watch what happens.

No Americans get cavity searches at airports. The government doesn’t look at your text messages. And we don’t waste time developing the Department of Homeland Security… instead we just let the Department of Defense do what it was meant to do… kill people and break things.

With Afghanistan a wasteland (not much different really – just fewer people), we would have asked “Who’s next?” and then taken appropriate action if Iran or Iraq decided to try something.

It’s that kind of action that stops those who would hurt you. The Jihadists want to consider us the “Great Satan,” so we should make sure they know they are in hell or on their way there. That would have been easy 13 years ago, now the cancer has spread. Now, a lot more people are going to die… on both sides… and this “war” won’t be over anytime soon.