Wednesday, September 26, 2001

[Editor's note: This letter was also sent to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.]

Having read the solutions proposed in this week's @issue section, I am dismayed at the foolishness of your columnists. There can be only one response to this week's terrorism vengeance and massive retaliation! The wooden-headed types on the left will say that America does not believe in vengeance. Bull! In the Civil War the Union flattened Richmond, burned Atlanta, and bombarded Vicksburg. In World War II, we fire-bombed Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo, etc. In all these examples, destroying military targets were not the objective; psychological warfare was. We were rightfully trying to demoralize our enemies. Simply killing the terrorists will turn them into martyrs, who will be replaced by thousands of supporters.

The fact is that there is widespread support in much of the Middle East for terrorism because it is the only way for these poor and backward people to strike at the West, their perceived enemy. Therefore, we must break their will to strike at us. The only way to do that is to flatten a city in the country or countries that have harbored the terrorist. To you weenies on the left, this will sound barbaric. And it is. But it will be effective. When they see that we can always and will always hit back harder than they can hit us they will back off. They will do this because they will see that the ultimate result of escalated terrorism will be their countrymen's genocide.

As for all the new proposed security measures, they will only lead to a police-state mentality and probably bankrupt the transportation industry in this country. The fact is we can not protect ourselves from suicidal terrorists by building defenses. If we protect the airports, they will hit the bus stations. If we guard the bus stations, they will bomb schools, stadiums, malls, gas pipelines, etc. We cannot be strong everywhere, we cannot guard everything.

Taking the offensive against these people is the only solutions. Let's hit them hard now and demoralize them. Otherwise one day a UPS truck with a nuke in the back is going to flatten downtown (your city's name here). Maybe your family will be under that mushroom cloud. Taken in that context, massive retaliation does not seem so barbaric after all. Even a liberal should be able to see this logic.

William M. Gilmer

Fayetteville

wmgilmer@mindspring.com

Back to Opinion Home Page | Back to the top of the page