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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sig who wrote (141386)	7/25/2004 11:23:23 AM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 281500

The International community must decide what rights if any , terrorists may have in human affairs. Apparently it is not against the law to make them part of the landscape with missile strikes in wartime, but do not embarrass them if captured. Yes. We are enamored of our civil liberties, and properly so, but cannot stomach the idea that even that slight, temporary infringements might save thousands of lives. Unfortunately, it is going to take an event of the size of 9/11 for Americans to wake up to the nature of the threat. And I'm not sure even another attack of 9/11 magnitude will do it. It might take two or three. These are the facts: 1.- Islamists are at war with us. 2.- They will not stop until they are stopped. 3.- They have no qualms about using WMD, including nuclear weapons, which are easy to make. 4.- They have tons of money from the ME financing their operations. 5.- Our defenses, particularly at the borders, and more specifically the Mexican border, are negligible. 6.- Our port defenses have been a joke. Though there have been improvements, defense of ports is particularly difficult. 7.- Iran is developing the means and methods of assisting the Islamists with nuclear devices. Iran will never attack the US or Israel directly because it knows that doing so means its annihilation. But it can transfer nuclear weapons to terrorists, deny that it did so, and rely on our indecisiveness to prevent a retaliatory attack. It's not a bad strategy. 8.- Ditto North Korea. 9.- Large terror events have been proven to work in shaping domestic politics. Spain and the Phillipines are only the first examples. It might work here. 10.- We cannot under any circumstances allow terror to influence our actions. We are finished if we do. The terrorists will simply dictate to us and to those who deal with us. 11.- The War on Terror needs a new name. Perhaps it should be called Islam's war on the West or something similar. 12.- Islam is not the enemy. There are vastly more moderate Muslims than there are terrorists. However, the terrorists have been capturing the moderates' imagination for a long time, inflaming them, and otherwise turning them against us much like the a tiny, aggressive minority turned peaceful Germans into supporters of Hitler's lunacy. 13.- We must show strength and unity if we are to win this war. We must set aside our differences, stop arguing about this and that and focus on the important issue. Otherwise, we are finished as a great power. It might take a decade or two for our decline to accelerate, but if we don't unite, it will inevitably happen. Bush nailed it in his post-9/11 speech to a Joint Session of Congress. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us because we stand in their way. ********************* Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes visible on TV and covert operations secret even in success. us_asians.tripod.com