Saturday, January 24, 2009

Our New Milk And Cookies War On Terror

We have an enemy that doesn't care if women and children are killed senselessly. They don't wear uniforms and they hide in schools, hospitals, homes, and religious places where our attempts to track them down and extricate or kill them could result in the deaths of even more innocent men, women, and children. They use suicide murders/bombers, in crowds, to kill their own people just to see if they can kill a single American. They will behead any American and American ally they capture; even if that person is a non-combatant such as a newspaper person, a social aid worker, or contractor. They might hang our captured troops from bridges or drag their dead and half-dead bodies through the streets. They literally believe that any act of terror, whether it be bombing or beheading, is their pathway to heaven. The principles of the Geneva Convention appear nowhere in their interpretation of the Quran.

With all that, Mr. Obama has decided we will take the high ground and be ethical in treating this, our extremely brutal enemy. He feels we should hold the high road; even if it means that many more of us will die. Apparently, the President thinks that, somehow, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are signatories to the Geneva Convention. I have a clue for him, they aren't! They carry no Army Field Manual. Only if we went to war with the Canadians or the French and others who signed the Geneva Convention would our troops be treated with respect (and, I'm not quite sure about the French).

I am not suggesting that we physically torture the enemy and, certainly, not on a widespread basis. But, mental torture, like water-boarding, has proved effective with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. High profile captures harbor information that could save thousand of lives. What if we catch Bin Laden in an Obama Administration? Are we going to offer him milk and cookies; a snuggly blanket and slippers; and a warm fire in hopes that he spills the beans on all his operations? "Another cigar, Mr. Bin Laden?" Maybe, we would let him plea bargain a lighter sentence on his possible sentence of 2,974 consecutive life sentences for the deaths on 9/11. Right! That'll work! The only signal that we are sending to the likes of Bin Laden is that we are soft on terrorism. It's a green light for horribly killing more Americans and not an inhibitor to our troops being treated fairly as in the precepts of the Geneva Convention. We'll only make the French happy and those at Amnesty International who constantly blame America for everything; but always turn a blind eye to the Saddam Hussein's of the world when they are busy slaughtering their own people; usually for ethnic reasons.

We should never take our options off the table. It will be a lot worse for the image of the United States if Mr. Obama, later, decides to allow water-boarding on the likes of a Bin Laden after saying we would never water-board. Rather than say we won't use psychological interrogation techniques, the President would have been better off to tighten the rules and limits as to the who, the when, the how, and the where that this type of interrogation could be conducted. Now, we are in the position of not even using the civilian tactic of "good-cop bad-cop" without being in violation of the strictly written rules of the Geneva Convention. The all-hour, blaring of music that was used against the Branch Davidians and David Koresh would not have been allowed either.

Those who hate this country, usually out of jealousy, will always make us look to be the bad guys; no matter how careful we are. They are the same people who broadly decry this country anytime we use bombs; but, seem to ignore the fact, that, as much as possible, we use smart bombs to avoid any collateral deaths and damage. No other country cares so much as to develop such targeted weaponry. Those same America-bashers idolize the Palestinians as freedom fighters and revel in their use of suicide murders to kill innocent woman and children and they applaud the Palestinian tactic of blindly firing unguided missiles into civilian neighborhoods. And, the Palastinians do it every day and multiple times a day. Like most liberal progressives, Mr. Obama is living in a fantasy world. The real world is much crueler than he seems to think. And, that's just my opinion.

One last comment. While all those liberal countries, like France, criticize us for torture, the French, like many other countries, seem not to be as "clean" as they would expect us to be (See Full Story).

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