An Unpopular Opinion?
I was having a discussion with a friend recently about America's War on Terrorism. He took the devil's advocate position that if we are going to fight such a war, rather than making surgical strikes with special forces we should go in full force and kill everyone - men, women, children, and the elderly alike. Now of course we don't actually condone the killing of innocent civilians. America is not a country of murderers, and no responsible nation would ever sponsor such a course of action. The point here is that if we are not willing to do the job right, why bother to do it at all? Does anyone truly believe that killing bin Laden will bring an end to terrorism? The following is an excerpt from Black Hawk Down, an account of the US special forces raid on Somalia in 1993. Somalia is on the coast of northeast Africa, and I believe the situation and attitudes of the people there are common throughout the Middle East. "It was a watershed," says one State Departmen...