War is hell. Here is a passage I remember that drives that point home:

“We were ordered to move out. As Tom climbed out of his foxhole a grenade went off and a piece of shrapnel cut his belly open and his intestines fell out. The last thing I saw was him trying to climb out of his foxhole, slipping on his intestines and crying for his mama.”

I generally don’t care for violence in movies except for war movies. There, the more violence the better — because people should know what war is like. But I am not against war. Sometimes they are necessary. For example, the Revolutionary War and the Civil War. The war on terror could be ended. All we have to do is pull all our military and businessmen out of that part of the world and turn it over to the radical Muslims. But because there are Muslims in other parts of the world like Malaysia and Africa, soon the radicals would want to move into those areas and bring them into the fold.

This is exactly what Adolf Hitler wanted to do. First, just unite with the German-speaking people in Austria, etc. Then he decided that he need living space and attack Russia, while refusing to give up France, Holland, etc.

History teaches us that such people are never satisfied and can always find an excuse to move into another country. So the question becomes: Do we hold them in Pakistan, or just wait for the next war after we turn tail and move out of that part of the world? It’s a tough choice, since wherever they are, there are women who are refused schooling and who must keep their face covered and must stay at home, and children being trained in terrorist camps to hate us. At some point, the free world would have sympathy for those being persecuted. How well are they now dug in by the time this sympathy surfaces?

How many lives could have been saved if we had stopped Hitler when he moved into Austria?

It’s a tough question but a question that can’t be ignored. Wherever we move out, they will move in. Even the peace-loving people can’t answer this question, while people who even put forward these ideas are called warmongers. Hopefully, common sense will prevail.

We have nearly forgotten about 9/11 and the passion that existed on 9/12. On that day, the issues were clear and America was united just like after Pearl Harbor. But things return to normal, and people call for an end to the “War on Terror.” We have not been attacked again, not because of George W. Bush’s policies, but because our thinking is just what the terrorists want. Another attack would fire up the public again and increase support for the war. They want protests against the war to continue.

This is exactly what the North Vietnamese did and we eventually pulled out. The terrorists are just waiting for us to tire of the war and pull out. It is encouraging for them as our new president is now setting deadlines for withdrawal. To win, all they have to do is wait. It’s easy to end a war. All you have to do is just give up.

What makes it really bad is that the corrupt governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq realize what a box we have gotten ourselves into and continue their corruption. And if we try to stop it, we are accused of interfering in their internal affairs, and the calls that we are occupying their country resurface.

This is a real dilemma made worse by the divisions among the American public. Whether we should have gone in the first place is not the question. The question is that we are in, so what do we do now?

I don’t have the answers, but I am pretty good at describing the problem for your consideration.