Ten Years After: We Still Lack The Will

The Spin Cycle has joined a group of conservative bloggers who have formed The Right Blogfest. On some special occasions we will all write a post on the same topic, with each one of us providing our own unique viewpoint.

Today we welcome a new blog to The Right Blogfest, The Samuel Adams Committee.

We are proud to join Two Sisters From The Right,  Raised On Hoecakes,  Steve Bussey.com, The Samuel Adams Committee, and Patriot's Corner in this project. 

We invite you to visit the other blogs for their own perspective on the topic at hand. 

Ten years have passed since Radical Islam declared war on the USA.

The attack on the World Trade Center

On 9-11-2001 19 radical Islamic terrorists hijacked four jet planes, sending two of them into the World Trade Center in NYC, one into the Pentagon building, and one destined for Washington DC that was forced down by the passengers into a rural area in Pennsylvania. Almost 3,000 American citizens were murdered in this attack. 

Immediately following this attack, then President GW Bush launched a "War on Terror" to defeat the terrorist group that sponsored this attack, their sponsor states, and their enablers.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned us at the time, saying:

"They (the terrorists) have the will to destroy us, but lack the means. We have the means to destroy them, but lack the will. It is a race to see who gets what first."

On the tenth anniversary of this inhuman act of terrorism, lets reflect on where we are today.

1. We have adopted a defensive posture, ramping up all our airport airport security measures, at a cost of trillions of dollars and millions of manhours of labor. The net result of this was to make air travel a nightmare for American citizens, adding huge costs and tremendous inconvenience.

Because we wanted to be "fair" we refused to target those most likely to be terrorists, and instead thoroughly inspected everyone, even old women, the handicapped, and infant children. Despite all these efforts, further terror attempts continued, that were prevented by only good luck, and nothing we actually did to prevent them.

2. On Oct 7, 2001, we waged war against Afghanistan, the nation that hosted Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda training camps. After rapidly winning the war, ousting the Taliban, and liberating the people, we decided to stick around and do some nation building to install a democracy in Afghanistan. The theory was we would be safer if Moslems would embrace democracy. The nation building effort resulted in over 1,800 American servicemen and women being killed, and around 10,000 being wounded. Despite nine years of nation building, terrorist acts against our troops continue.

3. On Mar 19, 2003 we invaded Iraq, a nation that was not involved in the 911 attack, but did threaten us and our allies in the region.

After rapidly winning this war too, we also decided to "nation build" in Iraq, and lost an additional 4,500 troops, plus tens of thousands more wounded. And we still have no stable democracy in Iraq eight years later.

4. We took all of the worst terrorists we captured, and moved them to a detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Marine base in Cuba, holding them for planned military tribunals. However, a sizable minority in the USA ("the Democrats") were sympathetic with the terrorists, and insisted we grant them all the rights and privledges of American citizens. Because of their intense pressure, some of the terrorists were released, and they returned to fighting against and killing our troops.

5. On Nov 4, 2008, we elected a President who is sympathetic with the terrorist cause, and who is a frequent critic of our own country. President Barack Hussein Obama, D-Kenya, not only openly supports and encourages Islamic Jihadists, but has helped fund Hamas, in their efforts to destroy our ally Israel. Despite this, the leader of Al-Qaeda was killed in a raid by the Navy Seals in 2011, which was most likely planned prior to President Obama's election, and politically impossible for him to prevent. However, he did take full credit for the success of the raid.

The bottom line here is that we are losing this war and losing it badly. We are losing because we lack the will to win it. We are losing this war for the very same reason we lost the Vietnam War. We simply are not committed to winning. Once again, political dissension at home has prevented us from reaching a consensus on what we need to do and how we must do it.

This is a total disgrace to the memory of the brave young men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation,

Islamic terrorists have completely disrupted our economy and our transportation system, and have cost us around 7,000 military deaths and trillions of dollars.

The "War on Terror" has become another "War on Drugs." A war that will be fought for the rest of time, at enormous cost, and will yield no good end result. And this is only because we lack the will to win it. We are too worried and distracted about treating the enemy well, and not offending their sponsors.

War should never be waged unless vital American interests are at stake, and unless we have a full commitment at home to win, and win quickly, using every weapon at our disposal.

Anything short of that is fighting a war half-assed, and will destroy our nation over time.

This is the lesson we should have learned in Vietnam.

As long as we keep worrying about terrorist's rights, and not offending Islam at large, we are doomed to failure.

No one ever worried about offending the Germans or Japanese during World War II. This demonstrates how much we have changed, and explains why we won that war, and are losing this one.

We should either wage war to win, or not wage it at all.