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The following editorial excerpts mirror my own opinions.~~~~Red 9/14/01
".........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.
.....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 Pearl 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 my people, my palace, my family, my life may be destroyed in return."
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."
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