The post-Vietnam mentality of this country will be its downfall unless it is diagnosed and dealt with. Our strategy has since been to minimize casualties on both sides of the fight: American and our enemy. Our thought has been steered to thinking that, if we kill civilians, we are wicked and are unjust in conducting war.

Has anyone from our generation taken a look at a war like World War II? To win, we absolutely destroyed cities such as Dresden, Hamburg, Berlin, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima and their residents. We were not concerned with international and local press, thus placing these entities above our own lives and securities.

And uncomfortably, the deaths of our troops in wars such as these need to be contrasted to our current casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq. We suffered far more devastating losses in other wars than we have in our current conflicts.

The purpose of war is to convince the citizens of the opposing force that victory is impossible and to show them that fighting back will lead to worse consequences than not.

Any person concerned with the lives of others and their well being will surely concur with the reasoning that war should only be conducted when it is the last possible resort. These people should surely recognize that conducting a half-hearted war is just as unjust as going to war for immoral purposes.

Our military response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 was more concerned with international and local opinion than the security of our people. We went into Afghanistan with an undersized force with the intent of occupying cities rather than destroying a lethal insurgency that has declared the goal of removing our influence from the entire region. We likewise did the same in Iraq, but we didn’t have enough troops in place to close the borders and quell any resistance. Now in both scenarios we have enemy troops that come and go at their leisure and are facing wars that could easily bleed our country to death (which sadly is the dream of Osama bin Laden and company).

Rather than relying on a strategy of muted responses to individual attacks, we need to realize that the enemy has indeed declared war and means to hurt us in such a way that we have no choice but to give in to its intentions.

Waiting for a more devastating attack which al-Qaida has promised is the wrong strategy. Listen to bin Laden’s words.

His stated strategy is to incrementally increase the strength that they hit us with. The next attack will surely be worse than Sept. 11, and, if it takes another attack to realize, this we will surely weep.

But enough talk about unjust wars and illegal campaigns against the enemy; we need to realize what is at stake and know that a brutal and devastating war is needed to defeat our enemy.

If our persistent weakness of non-reciprocal compassion continues, then sadly this conflict will mark the downfall of our great nation.

The terrorists who cut off the heads of our citizens don’t care about the Geneva Convention, and they sure don’t care about the concept of a fair fight.

Dan Turnbull

Senior

Marketing