Here we are again. News of another terrorist attack abroad is rocking us here at home. 1 month after Orlando, 4 months after Brussels, 7 months after San Bernardino, 8 months after the last Paris attacks – the list sadly goes on. Something has to change.
The Time to Fight Back
Here we are again. News of another terrorist attack abroad is rocking us here at home. 1 month after Orlando, 4 months after Brussels, 7 months after San Bernardino, 8 months after the last Paris attacks – the list sadly goes on. Something has to change. Clearly the current response to strengthening terrorist networks emerging around the world is not working. The top responsibility of your federal government is to provide for safety, security and protection of the American people, and it’s failing.
What is apparent is that this form of intimidation and awful terror is not going away. The current Administration’s approach has been to close our eyes and wish it away, all while blaming the 2nd amendment of the U.S. Constitution – that simply won’t work. When 19 terrorists attacked us on September 11th 2001, our country pledged to fight these terrorists at their doorsteps, to not rest until each person responsible was made to answer for their heinous crimes. We took the fight to al-Qaeda, we showed up in their homes, dragged them out and sent them to a military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to answer for their crimes. We gained intelligence on, pursued and ultimately eradicated Osama Bin Laden from the face of this earth.
No longer can America wish away the threat groups like ISIS pose. We have to take the fight directly to them. These radical terrorist groups hide in caves, hide in shadows and sit undeterred simply planning their next atrocity with no answer from the beacon of freedom and democracy, the United States. Their intentions are clear – with each attack they gain in strength, and with growing numbers they intend to attack us here at home. They want to intimidate us, change us, and kill us; they fear our way of life, the freedoms our country stands for and want to inflict harm on the millions of innocent civilians which call America home. Why are we sitting idle waiting for that to happen? They plan their attacks and spread their hate on social media, we should be disrupting their communications. They spew their terrorist propaganda on their own radio networks, we need to bomb their stations, towers and broadcast capabilities. They boast about their latest murder of innocents, we must answer with attacking them in their homes until they are no longer capable of such acts.
My frustration extends beyond an unwillingness to engage militarily these terrorist groups around the world. It is rooted in the fact that under this Administration, since 2012, we have shrunken our Army by 100,000 soldiers – to a point where our Generals have warned that our reduced military presence has “put at substantial risk our ability to conduct even one sustained major combat operation.” Today our Air Force is the oldest and smallest it has ever been in recent history. Simply put, we aren’t prepared and Americans are left vulnerable. When we pull back from having a strong military presence around the globe, it allows others, those with different goals, a different world vision and a destabilizing mentality to fill the void left in our own wake. When we disengage with the threats of the world, the threats of right now, it perpetuates a rosy but fantasy filled view of the world that everyone is our friend and ally and we have no enemies wishing to do the innocents in this country harm. That just simply isn’t the world we live in today.
Groups that spread this type of hate and carry out these murders in the world only answer to strength and fear. We can’t negotiate with them, we can’t placate them and we can’t succumb to their demands of bringing our country to its knees. This is the war of this generation, and it’s time we remove ourselves from the sidelines and answer the need to keep American’s safe. The only way to prevent future attacks is for radical Islamic terrorist groups like ISIS to know that there are consequences for attacking innocents, and those consequences will mean their complete obliteration from the holes they cower in. We owe that to the people of Brussels, the people of Paris, and the 320 million Americans who place their hand over their heart when they hear the Star Spangled Banner.
