The most advanced military power on earth has not been allowed to win a war since WWII. Winning offends people, namely the losers. Therefore, in a politically correct world, winning is not an option.
Instead of defeating enemies, we now seek to appease them first, and contain them when they refuse to be appeased. Winning is not an option… It hurts people’s feelings.
International Terrorism
Many Americans have put the events of 9/11 in their past and moved on to pretend that it was an isolated event that can never happen again. Though they are distantly aware that international terror organizations still plot and plan against the west, time without incident has driven public concern over national security to the bottom of the list of things to worry about.
Though the threat is as real as it was on September 11, 2001, it is as far from the average voter’s consciousness as it was on September 10, 2001. For too many Americans, the threat is only real when it fully materializes. Until then, any effort to discuss the matter openly is played off as some political scare tactic.
Flirting with War
There is no legitimate debate over whether or not America has been made safer as a result of our reactions to the events of 9/11. There has been no second 9/11 and not because terrorists have lost the will or means to attack.
While we have clearly made some improvements in the area of national defense since 2001, we have not made much headway in allowing our troops to complete the missions we send them to accomplish.
While America is indeed “safer” than it was before 9/11, it is by no means “safe” and it never will be unless and until international terrorism in no longer a viable threat to innocent unsuspecting citizens throughout the west.
So far, we have flirted with the war. We have taken both defensive and preemptive actions to “contain” the threat. We have not allowed our troops to eliminate the threat.
Flying Blind
Terror profiling is now referred to as “racial profiling.” The intelligence agency (NSA) founded for the sole purpose of “intercepting enemy communications” has been attacked by Americans for attempting to intercept enemy communications. Huh? Come again???
DOD and CIA efforts to extract information concerning the when, where and what of future terror operations against the U.S., from the only people on earth who know those plans, have been redefined as an affront upon the civil rights of terrorists who are desperate to kill more civilians.
The Patriot Act was passed to eliminate the “wall of separation” that kept the FBI from sharing with the CIA, information concerning the Atta Al Qaeda cell that led the attacks of 9/11, which the FBI had identified in New York City a year before 9/11. It has since been attacked by the very politicians who passed it into law, as some “spy bill” aimed at average American citizens.
Any realistic effort to acquire the information needed to defend against future terror plots is attacked as an affront to the civil rights of international terrorists who have no such rights. When it comes to intelligence operations, winning is not an option…
With Both Hands Tied
Our enemy has no rules of engagement. Beheading, dismemberment, burning alive, mass bombing, men, women and children, predominately civilians of the most unsuspecting and defenseless kind, is the embraced standard for terror operations. There is no line beyond which terrorists will not go to achieve their goals.
But American soldiers are quite another story.
Unarmed civilians are the primary target of our enemy. But the unintended accidental death of a civilian caught in the crossfire, can get an American solider court-martialed. Our enemy seeks to attack unarmed and unsuspecting targets. Our soldiers are trained not to fire until first fired upon.
Since the incoming can be a homemade bomb strapped to the chest of a four year old asking a soldier for candy, only an American soldier would even attempt to fight under such rules.
Many American soldiers have lost their limbs or their lives to crude homemade roadside bombs, as they were bringing food and water, or working to restore basic utility services to Iraqi families, many of whom were also blown up in the indiscriminate attacks.
Removing the Hussein Regime from power took only days. But winning the peace in Iraq remains out of reach, because winning is not an option… We have the situation contained, appeasement efforts are underway.
The Politics of Losing
When all is well, when we are “winning” – the people won’t vote for “change.”
The people will vote for change only once they are convinced that present policies have “failed.” Hence, the three words used repeatedly in every speech by both Democrat presidential candidates, “failed policies” that demand “change.”
How far are they willing to go in their efforts to create “failed policies” and the need for “change?”
Three House Democrats, Congressmen Jim McDermott (D-WA), Mike Thompson (D-CA), and David E. Bonior (D-MI, now retired), took a $34,000 trip to Iraq five months before America would depose the Hussein Regime, for the sole purpose of undermining official American policy concerning Iraq.
It’s now public knowledge that the trip was paid for by Michigan man,
Muthanna al-Hanooti, indicted on espionage charges, accused of spying on the U.S. for the Hussein regime. That makes these three congressmen “useful idiots” at best…
Democrat Select Committee on Intelligence
Chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller made a similar private trip to the Middle East only weeks after 9/11, describing the trip for FOX News this way, "I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11."
For weeks and months after that trip, we watched the Hussein regime move weapons to the Syrian Desert by convoy and by the time U.S. troops arrived more than a year later in March of ‘03, guess what? No WMD found… Surprise – surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say.
Democrats like John Murtha, Dick Durbin, Jim McDermott, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have worked around the clock to undermine U.S. Middle East policy, in particular the war against international terrorism. Hillary Clinton voted in support of every Bush initiative in the war on terror, including regime change in Iraq. But that was before she needed the anti-war vote-for-change in her bid for the Oval Office.
Barack Obama can’t complete a single campaign sentence without using the three magic words, “failed policies” and “change.” Even blatant outright lies will become true if they are regurgitated often enough, long enough, to useful idiots.
All of these Democrats and many more like them have worked to make foreign policy a “failed policy” that would demand “change” in upcoming election cycles.
And with the help of a complicit press corps, which has failed to report anything beyond daily body counts in Iraq since the day we set foot on Iraqi soil, they are succeeding in convincing the average American voter that winning is not an option…
Change is Coming
Bush is criticized for not taking preemptive measures to thwart the events of 9/11, even though nobody but the terrorists knew how, when or where those events would unfold. He has also been criticized for taking preemptive measures to make certain that Hussein’s hidden weapons program did not play a roll in any future terror attacks on U.S. soil.
No matter what criticisms the antiwar left can levy against Bush, history will have to record that Bush was successful in seeing to it that there was no second 9/11 on his watch.
But change is coming…
The problem with preventive measures is we can’t put a number on how many innocent lives were saved by those measures. To find out how many lives were saved by taking all of these actions to prevent another 9/11, we will have to stop doing them and wait until we can count the body bags that come with inaction.
9/11 was NOT enough
So long as winning is not an option, one 9/11 is not enough. It will take more death and destruction on American soil to convince many Americans, including many politicians, that in matters of life and death, winning is the only option.
So long as winning is politically unacceptable, change is coming… Watch what you wish for… what you vote for, even more!
