Reviewing Our War

December 15, 2002

by Brian W. Peterson

The war against terrorism is fourteen months old. How the war has progressed is open for debate, but there are both encouraging and discouraging signs that we can defeat the terrorists who wish to destroy our way of life.

First, the negative: Whether or not it is truly an important gauge, Osama bin Laden is quite likely alive. Every breath that he draws means that justice for the victims of September 11 and their families is elusive.

Progress seems to be slow on the home front when it comes to breaking up al-Qa’eda cells that exist within our borders. Despite busts in Buffalo and Portland, there are likely three thousand more terrorists with ties to al-Qa’eda on our soil. In fairness to authorities, identifying many of these people is no easy task.

We head into the new year the most powerful country in the history of the world. Yet a group of fanatical warriors with no home country and no organized army dogs us and keeps us on nervous alert. These warriors are many things, including cowards who attack innocent people, but they are also dedicated in their fanaticism to carry out their missions.

Stopping such fanatics can only be accomplished with resolve and patience.

On the positive side, we have captured or killed numerous al-Qa’eda leaders, accumulated intelligence from the captured leaders which has prevented further attacks, and expanded our abilities to track terrorists within our borders.

When a “Predator,” an unmanned aerial vehicle, launched a Hellfire missile into a car in Yemen, the CIA not only killed six terrorists, including a high-level al-Qa’eda member, they also sent a message to terrorists around the world that the warm little feeling of security that they’ve had for many years is now over. The United States of America will no longer run because a few of our people are killed, and as our president famously said just before the campaign in Afghanistan began, “We’re not gonna fire a $2 million missile into a ten dollar tent and hit a camel in the butt.”

The Predator strike in Yemen was possibly more important for the psychological effect on terrorists than for the six terrorists we actually killed.

Another important yet ongoing success has been our ability to tighten the screws on the flow of money to terrorists. We have seized funds and shut down organizations that masquerade as charities, and we have also exposed so-called charities with links to the Saudi royal family.

While the Saudis either looked the other way or outright aided terrorists, the exposure of their connections to terrorist front groups has proven to be embarrassing. The minimal help to the US by Saudi Arabia will likely improve as a result of such exposure.

Our biggest success to date is the lack of another attack on our soil. Despite the existence of up to 3,000 terrorists on our soil, intelligence organizations have been successful in preventing further carnage.

Our war against terrorism may never end. President Bush’s warning that this could be a ten-year affair may be optimistic. It may sound like a cliché, but our world did change on September 11, 2001. We will likely be in a permanent state of war for the foreseeable future. We would like to think that, because we are the most powerful nation on earth, no one could defeat us. The truth is, our own lack of diligence can defeat us.

We didn’t wish for this war, but we must win it. The president warned that the war against terrorism would be slow and would require much patience. He also warned that there would be successes about which we could never know. Such successes have probably already occurred. Now it’s up to the American people to not grow either restless or apathetic against the war efforts, both home and abroad.

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Brian W. Peterson writes a political column for the Antelope Valley Press (circulation approximately 60,000) in Palmdale, California. He is a graduate of Oral Roberts University, where he majored in TV/Film. Brian’s weekly commentary and newspaper columns can be found at www.LifeAndLiberty.com.

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