The American Spectator

Reader Mail

(Page 8 of 17)

In a perfect and abstract world where all parties behave in accordance with a certain set of assumptions, the use of military force would not be required in Iraq or any other dark corner of the globe. I wish we lived in such a world. The truth is we do not.

The notion that we can pull our troops out of the fight and thereby stymie the terrorists and their evil plots because they won't have our troops to target is absolute nonsense.

What about mainland America? Could the terrorists attack us here at home?

Is it better to fight a war on the soil of our enemy or on our own soil? Is it better to fight a war with the best trained, best equipped, best lead military machine that ever existed, or is better to fight a war with domestic emergency responders like police and fire rescue workers?

The reason terrorists attack our troops is because it is convenient for them. The US military is on their soil. To get close enough to attack our troops the terrorist travels through adjacent countries where the native people share similar appearance, language, customs, etc. To enter Iraq, a terrorist can get in the back of a pickup truck and drive across the border. In many cases no identification, no passport, no visa, no money is required for the terrorist to make this journey.

p>Contrast this with a terrorist attack in the America. To attack America a terrorist has to travel halfway across the planet. The terrorist needs money, decent clothes, some understanding of western culture, training, and a base in the US where he can plot his treachery and accumulate the explosives or other devices required. Remove our troops from the Islamic world and where will the focus of the Islamic fascist fanatics turn? America. Remove our troops and the threat does not diminish. br> -- Doug Santo br> Pasadena, California /p>

George H. Wittman has a dictionary that defines "terrorist" in a way that includes Revolutionary War militia, Civil War cavalry, U.S. Army forces behind Japanese lines in the Philippines all the way to Special Forces in Vietnam.

I would say that Mr. Wittman, and perhaps the editors of TAS, should be ashamed of themselves for printing such material, but "shame" appears to be a word that has no meaning to anyone today.

My dictionary, OED Ninth Edition, defines "terrorist" as "a person who uses or favours violent and intimidating methods of coercing a government or community." Unless one wishes to classify all armed forces in all contexts as "terrorists," one must focus on "community" for the commonly understood target of the terrorist. In that sense, none of the targets of Mr. Wittman's words qualify as terrorists. Their actions were without exception directed against uniformed enemy combatants.

Just in case the meaning of "community" in the terrorist context is unclear, consider the experience of my mother, at the time a twenty year old "au pair" hiding from the Gestapo in 1944 Brussels. She was walking a young boy and a baby carriage with an infant, turning the corner of the Avenue Louise, when a German officer exited a restaurant, and right in front my mother was gunned down by Belgian partisans. She had the presence of mind to pick-up the boy, and run with him and the carriage as quickly as possible down the Avenue Louise, knowing exactly what was about to happen. The Germans pulled everyone out of the restaurant, and a number of passers by, lined them up against the wall of the restaurant, and gunned them down. [i]That[/i] was using "violent and intimidating methods of coercing a...community." Not the Minutemen with their squirrel guns. Not Mosby's cavalry. And not the Green Berets with the Montagnards in the Central Highlands.

p>Language is the

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