Can you imagine a day when a squadron of planes enter into American airspace and attack a costal city like Santa Cruz or New York? What about a fleet of ships bomb Anaheim or Cape Cod? What about a Submarine nuking Boston or San Diego? It is hard to imagine.
We have used amazing equipment in the Iraq War. Take for example an incredible technology inherent to the Abrams Fighting Machine. It has charges built inside of the shell all around the interior of the tank. When an RPG hits a section of the armor, a charge in the interior will immediately explode in an instant to counter act the blow from outside reducing the chance of harm done to tank and ultimately done to the brave soldiers inside. My cousin was in a Abrams squad on the front lines of the beginning of Iragi Freedom. The Abrams has been ready to use for about 5 to 6 years. It is beyond anything that world has except for what the Israelis have or some secret Chinese tank.
I only speak of this capabilty to illustrate a point: The Abrams was used as a front line armor solution to weed out other armor for infantry to step up to the next phase of the war, and it is 'old' tech and was used as offensive means of armor penetration. We have no idea what our defensive measure are for American soil. I am not a military genius by any step of the imagination, but the way that I see it is this: it highly improbable for any large scale offensive to suceed against the US as the world turns today unless China sends 2,000 planes, 100 ships, and 50 subs. But if China did take these steps, we would send missle upon missle and plane upon plane to counter this attempt. Basically, it is impossilbe for it to succeed with all the counter measures that we don't know about and satellites watching every move that every country makes.
I say all the above to state this: Terrorism is very important. It is our weakness along with every other democratic loving country.
The war against terrorism could shape the 21st Century in the same way as the Cold War defined the world before the fall of the Berlin Wall. To win, we must first clearly understand what we are up against. I am grateful to the Council on Foreign Relations for the opportunity to share my views on this important subject.
Terrorism is a generic term. Terrorist organisations such as the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka or ETA in Spain are only of local concern. The virulent strain of Islamic terrorism is another matter altogether. It is driven by religion. Its ideological vision is global. It is most dangerous. The communists fought to live whereas the jihadi terrorists fight to die, and live in the next world. . . .
But the threat remains. It stems from a religious ideology that is infused with an implacable hostility to all secular governments, especially the West, and in particular the US. Their followers want to recreate the Islam of 7th Century Arabia which they regard as the golden age. Their ultimate goal is to bring about a Caliphate linking all Muslim communities. Their means is jihad which they narrowly define as a holy war against all non-Muslims whom they call "infidels".
-Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong of Singapore
Terrorism has to be dealt with.
Here is Blog titled "Not in My City" by an Iraqi tht you will find VERY interesting. Read the whole thing. It also proves the point that we are not getting everything that happens in Iraq in our current partisan media
Here is an honest and revealing exceprt:
On the road to the residents’ house we passed near the coalition base in Samawa; the striking and ugly feature of this base, like any other one is, the concrete wall that surrounds it. These walls initiate a sensation of fear in the hearts and a feeling that there’s a huge block between the people and the coalition. I understand the security necessity of these walls but they still form an unpleasant sight for everyone, except this particular one. The coalition forces here invited all the kids-and their parents-in the neighborhood for a special festival, the kids were given paints and brushes and a definite area of the wall was assigned for each kid to paint on whatever he likes and to sign his painting with his/her name. I leave it for you to imagine how this hateful wall looked like after this festival. It became a fascinating huge painting that gives a feeling of brotherhood and friendship. These paintings eliminated all the psychological walls between the folks and the coalition here.
At the end of the festival, gifts were given to each kid; toys, clothes, candies…
You can’t imagine how happy the kids were when they stood proudly pointing at their paintings; flowers, birds, hands shaking and the flags of Iraq and the coalition countries, and then pointing to their names; Zahra, Mohammed, Sajjad, Fatima… together with phrases like; yes for peace, Saddam has fallen and many others. No one can watch this without having tears filling his eyes and I feel sorry that I couldn’t take pictures for this carnival, as I wasn’t there when it happened, but the people there told me the whole story.
