America Did Not Stay the Course

Terrorism never works. The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, to make your enemies cower and hide under the bed. It never works. September 11th is the prime example of the failure of Al-Quaeda and other terrorist groups. Americans aren't afraid. They don't hide in their homes, worrying that they will be hit next. They don't capitulate to terrorist demands. Instead, they get pissed, unite, and retailate. And when we retaliate, we really hit hard.

Look at our military. You've got B-52 Bombers that can bomb the crap out of anything. A-10's that can tear everything apart and can get hit by anything and never go down. B-2 Spirits and F-22 Raptors that can strike from nowhere. Our soldiers are, for the most part, confident, competent and professional. Any terrorist staring down the barrel of an American M-16 is quaking in his turban.

Rather than sitting back and hiding, what did we do? We attacked. We pointed the mighty spear of Americas military at the heart of Al-Quaeda in Afghanistan.

Then we changed our minds. Thanks to our hypocrite president, we suddenly decided to ignore Osama Bin Laden (who Bush has been quoted saying "I'm not worried about him") and attack a nation that was not a threat to American security.

Our president has said, about ten thousand times in the last five years, that the United States will "stay the course until the job is done." We did not stay the course. We did not do what we set out to do in October 2001, in retaliation to the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor in 1941. In October 2001, we headed to Afghanistan, where the Taliban was harboring the terrorist group Al-Quaeda, which was responisible for the attacks on 9-11. Then we ousted the Taliban and set our sights on Al-Quaeda. And then we shifted focus to Iraq, leaving Afghanistan largely ignored in the eyes of the public. We're still looking, but we aren't putting any effort into it. Our army is bogged down in Vietnam Iraq and we cannot concentrate enough force to flush out our main enemy, Al-Quaeda headmaster Bin Laden, and kill or capture him. Al-Quaeda is still a major threat to the American public and where are we? In Iraq fighting insurgents, who if we hadn't invaded, would have left us alone. Meanwhile, we half-heartedly fight Al-Quaeda. We lost the course when we invade Iraq.

George Bush and his cowboy attitude has gotten us nowhere. Al Quaeda still exists. Bin Laden is still at large and more Americans have been killed. The terror threat has raised, we can no longer bring liquid on an airplane. We aren't safe from terrorists. On the contrary, the situation even worse. By attacking a foreign nation that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack, we've angered the Middle Easterns even further, generating more extremists and more attacks. I don't feel safer than I did before the attack, I feel more vulnerable. Because of this, George Bush is a failure. An incompetent cowboy who has no idea what he is doing or who he is really hurting.

To stay the course, the United States should have stayed in Afghanistan until Al-Quaeda was crushed and its leaders captured or killed. Then we go home. We keep searching for other terrorist threats and deal with them accordingly as we find them. But we also need to improve relations in the Middle East to further avoid terrorism. The United States and the Middle East both need to learn to compromise and, if not like each other, learn to live with each other.

We did not stay the course in Afghanistan. Today is September 11, 2006 and Osama Bin Laden and his network is still a major threat to the American people. In five years after the attacks, George Bush has accomplished absolutely nothing.

J Kuhl Signing Off