War on Terror

We have many arrows in our quiver, but it seems we do not know how to use them.

We cannot un-do our recent history. As much as I like to imagine how different our world would be (from the perspective of an American) had we not fought three stupid wars in the past 55 years, we have to live and make decisions based on the world we now have. That said, there are several actions we should take immediately.

1. We should withdraw from Iraq immediately. Iraq is not the base of Al Qaida.

2. We should build up one or more very large military bases in Afghanistan, for future use. All the military forces we have in Afghanistan should be kept in these bases until they are called up for the real battle.

3. We should put Al Qaida and any nation which harbors its leaders on notice that we fully intend to hunt them down and kill them.

4. We work with friendly allies to gain intelligence on Al Qaida.

5. We beef up the CIA and order it to locate Osama bin Laden and the rest of the top leadership of Al Qaida.

6. Once we know bin Laden's exact location, we give the harboring nation one chance to kill and capture him. If they fail, we warn them, then we will enter that nation with all of our military forces if need be, in order to kill or capture bin Laden.

7. We should put all the nations which fund Al Qaida on notice that we will strike them at random after any possible terror attacks on our homeland.

We need to keep in mind that our military is very good at punishing, but awful at nation-building. Therefore, we should no longer attempt nation-building, and abandon the stupid notion that "if you break it, you own it".

We are at war, and have been since 9/11. How we got here will be reviewed by future historians. But since we are at war, we must win it. The first step is to leave the sideshow known as Iraq.