Techniguy 09-11-04

In reading about the speech President Bush gave this morning, I was struck by one simple sentence that we've all heard before; "More than three-quarters of al Qaeda's key members and associates have been detained or killed". I know some will say "that's great!", and still others will say "that's nice but what about Osama?". And then it struck me... what if the President had not taken the strong and decisive action that he did, and those three-quarters of al Qaeda's top leaders were still in business plotting and planning more attacks on us? How many more times would we have been attacked in the past three years? What would America look like today if the leadership of al Qaeda had not been dismantled?

Al Qaeda has cells all over the world but without their leadership to link them together, coordinate, and finance them, they are capable only of acting on their own with limited planning and funding. Osama, if he is even still alive, is no longer capable of communicating with the cells or even apparently, of appearing or speaking to them on audio or video tape any more, it would be the same were he dead. The cells have, in effect, lost their leader and financier who held them together and can no longer function as an international organization. Is America safer because of this? You bet your berka it is. Put that together with the arrests and restraints resulting from the Patriot Act of Islamics living in our country with links to terrorism and that is likely why we haven't been attacked again.

In Iraq we have taken away al Qaeda's number two training camp and possible source for weapons of mass destruction as well as eliminating a rogue dictator who had declared war on us and with the resources to carry out attacks. Iran has reacted to this by sending in insurgents and terrorists allied with al Qaeda to try to run us out. Iran has now become the biggest threat to our security where before it was only number three. That's not to say that Iran has become more of a threat, it means al Qaeda and Iraq have become less of a threat now. With Iran actively pursuing nuclear weapons and missiles, there is no doubt that they will have to be stopped before long too before it's too late, negotiations won‘t work because we have nothing they want other than our lives .

That is the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Action. It is harsh, but necessary to keep our country safe. When we know there is a threat, we deal with it before it's too late and we suffer another attack. If they won’t cooperate with the world community’s demands to disarm, then they will have to be taken out of the game. That is the only way to defend our country against the kind of enemy we now face in the world. If you have any doubts about that, just ask Vladimir Putin and the parents of the hundreds of children who were killed in Russia last week.

You don't win a war by just killing soldiers, you have to break their hearts and their will to fight. In WW2 we burned the cities of Luxemburg and Dresden in Germany, not because they were strategic targets, but to break the hearts and will of the German people to fight. It was the same in Japan when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it broke the will of the Japanese to fight any longer. This tactic is well known to the terrorists and they use it as their primary form of attack. They think they can drive us out of Iraq by breaking our hearts and will to fight with their beheadings and brutal acts of terrorism. They think Americans are too soft to face such brutality and would rather run away. They were successful with Spain and the Philippines when they gave into the terrorists’ demands. Now the terrorists know they can call the shots with those countries and Spain and the Philippines will obey.

This tactic would work with John Kerry and the antiwar liberals also, but not with President Bush and those who support him. This is what Kerry gave into in Vietnam when he condemned his own country and soldiers publicly, accused them of war crimes and the country's administration of supporting an illegal war. The will of the Communist Vietcong at that time was almost defeated but Kerry gave them the hope they needed to keep fighting and turned the tables on the American soldiers, destroying support for them in the US, and breaking their will to fight with his antiwar statements against his own country.

This is why support for the war and our foreign policy in America is so important to winning. It's not the body count that wins the war, it's the will to fight that has to be defeated. If the enemy sees us as divided, that strengthens their will and encourages them to fight. If they see us as united behind the war effort, there is no enemy in the world who can stand up to the strength and will of the American people. This is the face we must show them if we hope to win. The only alternative is to go down in shame with our will broken as we did in Vietnam. People need to take a lesson from history and recognize that history is trying to repeat itself now. John Kerry and his band of antiwar liberals are doing it again to our country, just as they did with Vietnam, with their criticisms and lack of support for the efforts of our President to protect this country and defeat our enemies. A war is won with psychology, not with just guns. We have to convince the enemy they have lost before they convince us that we have lost. That is the game, that is the key to winning. We can only do that by showing our enemy we are a strong America united behind our President and his plan for national security.

I understand John Kerry’s desire to win an election but to use the War on Terror as a political football to toss around from side to side to try to win votes is just putting his own ambition ahead of our national security. To claim that he can in some way create a stronger America with his history of being anti-war, anti-military, anti-defense, anti-intelligence, and to portray our country as isolationist bullies, sends the wrong message to the world and to the terrorists. This is the kind of thinking that would cost us the war if it were allowed to go on much beyond November second. How many American soldiers lives have been lost and people kidnapped over the past year because of this kind of pacifist thinking? How much has the enemy been encouraged to fight on by hearing this message coming from the United States? What is it going to take for all Americans to see that Kerry is betraying his country again just as he did with Vietnam? He has put his political ambitions ahead of our national security once again and this is not the kind of person we need as president in a time of war or at any other time. We have a president now who’s loyalty is to God and his country more than any personal interests or ambitions. This is the president we need to fight this war on terror, a man we can trust to act in the best interests of America.

President Bush has forced extensive reforms in national security policies since 9-11-01 to keep America safe. John Kerry says if he were president, he would adopt all of the recommendations of the 911 commission immediately. What does that tell you? It tells me that Kerry is a man who would let other decide what is best for our country, a man who would follow instead of lead. He has expressed the same attitude when it comes to the United Nations and would be subservient to them, not stand up to them the way President Bush has done. Another sign that Kerry is not a leader but a follower. In November we will all have to decide who we truly believe can best defend our country in this trying time of being faced with an enemy like none we have ever faced before. It requires a strong leader to pioneer and lead the way in this uncharted territory. I believe we have such a leader in President Bush.

Techniguy

Article on President Bush’s 911 speech is attached including audio/video links to the speech.