Why We Fight -->A Message for the Democrats

American Heroes are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places across the world to make sure that our children and grand-children won't have their flesh splattered on the walls of an ice cream parlor by some Islamic homicide bomber motivated by a religious cleric intent on killing as many civilians as possible.

Most of the western world does not understand this. Most of the Democratic Party does not understand this. They call the War against Islamic fascists a bumper sticker. Candidates such as John Edwards and Barak Obama say we should get out of Iraq now. Jim Baker says its an off-shoot of Israels battles against Palestinian terror. He is wrong--If (G-d forbid) there was no Israel, there would still be terrorists, but they would just be concentrating more of their energy in North America, Western Europe and Russia.

The war on terror is not a figure of speech or a bumper sticker. It is an inescapable calling of our generation. The terrorists are offended not merely by our policies - they are offended by our existence as free nations. They are offended by the fact that they can see our lifestyle but except for the very rich they cannot touch it. No concession will appease their hatred. No accommodation will satisfy their endless demands. Their ultimate ambitions are to control the peoples of the Middle East, and to blackmail the rest of the world with weapons of mass terror so they can enslave all of us via their fascist society. There can be no separate peace with the terrorist enemy. Any sign of weakness or retreat simply validates terrorist violence, and invites more violence for all nations. The only certain way to protect Americans and freedom loving people all over the world is decisive action."

That is the issue facing the United States, Israel and much of the world (even though nations such as France, England and Norway are convinced if they keep their heads in the sand long enough the problem will just go away). .

With the UN, World Court, EU and much of the international media all giving tacit or complete approval to some terrorism, as Americans we must fight for what is right. We cannot as the Democrats suggest, take a cue from world's majority opinion. We must vote to continue the fight against the Islamic terrorists to ensure that our children and grand children never have to see that black cloud in their own back yard. So our cousins in Tel Aviv and Haifa and Jerusalem will be able to send their kids to school on buses without having to worry if they will be coming home in one piece, and even for the people in Great Britain and France whose governments have nursed terrorism to maturity with their double standards and appeasement of Palestinian terror.

As Clifford May suggests, its not at all about WHETHER we should fight its about WHERE we should fight. Abroad or on our own shores.

Where We Fight

By Clifford D. May


Where We Fight America is at war with al-Qaeda -- on that surely we can agree -- and we know that al-Qaeda has bases in Pakistan. In fact, it is probable that Osama bin Laden resides at one of those bases. But we can’t fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan because Pakistan is an ally, and America does not violate the territorial integrity of its allies.

Al-Qaeda is active in Gaza, according to Egyptian and Jordanian intelligence. Al-Qaeda supports Hamas which has just waged a bloody -- and successful -- civil war against Fatah, its Palestinian rival. But we’re not about to invade Gaza in pursuit of al-Qaeda. Even Israel, which withdrew from Gaza two years ago, is not eager to return there.

In Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, which is fighting the Lebanese government, is believed to be linked to al-Qaeda. But the last time U.S. troops were in Lebanon, they were attacked by suicide-bombers dispatched by Hezbollah, a terrorist organization directed by the regime in Tehran. There is no way the U.S. is going to send troops into Lebanon again.

Groups linked to al-Qaeda are in Somalia. We have supported Ethiopian troops fighting there. But a serious effort by Americans against al-Qaeda in Somalia seems unlikely.

Al-Qaeda cells operate in Europe. But it is problematic for American operatives to kill or capture terrorists there: To do so sparks allegations from the “human rights community” and the media about violations of international law, torture and secret prisons. Also, as has happened in Italy, it can lead to criminal prosecutions of Americans thought to be involved. So America’s ability to fight al-Qaeda in Europe is limited.

There are probably al-Qaeda cells in the U.S. too. One hopes the FBI is monitoring them. But until the members of these cells commit crimes, there is not much that can be done. On what basis could Mohammed Atta, ringmaster of the 9/11/01 hijackers, have been arrested on 9/10/01?

What’s more, some judges and legal activists are now insisting that even combatants illegally in the U.S. are entitled to all the rights enjoyed by American citizens. If this view prevails, fighting al-Qaeda within the U.S. will become even harder.

That leaves only two places where we know for sure al-Qaeda and its associates are operating actively -- and very lethally -- and where the U.S. can send its best warriors against them with the approval of the local, elected governments. Those places are, of course, Iraq and Afghanistan.

But many politicians, looking at polls showing Americans fatigued by a war that was not supposed to be so prolonged or arduous, now favor withdrawing from Iraq -- retreating from the battlefield al-Qaeda calls the central front in their jihad against us.

And does anyone seriously believe that, after leaving Iraq, we would not soon exit Afghanistan as well? How many suicide-bombings of police academies, market places and mosques would be required to get us out -- slaughters that the major media will, as usual, blame not on the killers but on the “foreign occupation”?

If this is where members of Congress want to go, they ought to be honest about where it leads: al-Qaeda will still be waging a war against us, but we will no longer be waging much of a war against al-Qaeda.

To be sure, the war we’ve been fighting is not the war Americans signed up for when President Bush made the decision to enter Iraq four years ago. In the 20th century, international conflicts took the form of great European armies clashing. In the 21st century, Pentagon strategists thought conflicts would consist of short, decisive battles with small, well-trained American forces wielding high-tech weapons to produce “shock and awe” and break the enemies’ will to fight.

Our enemies had other plans. They decided to fight from the shadows -- kidnapping, torturing and mass-murdering whatever victims are at hand, relying on key groups in the West to blame the carnage not on them but on us, thereby eroding our will to fight.

Today’s wars, military analyst Tom Donnelly has written, are “like the frontier fighting of the 19th century -- in the American West but also in the far-flung outposts of the British Empire … the prime directive for U.S. land forces is neither deployability, nor mobility, nor lethality, but sustainability.”

And right now, sustainability appears to be the capability most lacking -- not among America’s troops in the field but among the political classes in Washington. Almost a decade ago, Osama bin Laden said that Americans were “unprepared to fight long wars.” Secure in his Pakistani redoubt, he must be pleased that his analysis is proving so uncannily accurate.