9/11 + 5 years

[G.Irish]

At any rate we must capture and kill those in terrorist organizations at every opportunity while simultaneously practicing intelligent foreign policy that will lessen hateful sentiment against us and our goals. We've got to fight a war of ideas to remove popular support for extremism just as much as we need to wage war to eliminate enemy combatants.

that sounds a lot too much like apologism to me. They are going to hate us no matter what, there is nothing we can do to appease, and trying to do so just makes us look weaker and makes them hate us more and gives the terrorists more credit.

How is it apologism to be smart with foreign policy? Should we treat every problem like a nail because we only have a hammer? My point is that if you give terrorists less places to hide and less popular support they will have a harder time operating. The more Muslims feel like we are fighting a war against only terrorists and not Christian nation waging war against Middle Eastern people and Islam the easier it will be for us to win. I'm not saying we shouldn't be kicking down doors and blowing up hideouts. I'm just saying we can't sit back and think that is the only strategy we can use.

The extremist groups that be are a threat to muslims who simply want a better life for themselves too and if you can turn the Muslim world at large against those who will murder and kill to meet their political goals you will make it easier to root them out. That's what we did in Afghanistan.

We've got to put pressure on countries where these organizations operate but we need to be smart about how we use our power. I know you don't think we should be dumb and indiscriminate.

Im not going to play politically correct with the whole terrorism and Muslim connections. Time and time again it has been shown that there simply isnt a black and white line between the two. There have been way too many muslim non-profits mosques that have been fronts for terrorist funding, too many millions of dollars donated by muslims, too many governments supporting terrorism, not to mention the masses of poor muslims in the countries who outright praise the terrorism for me to believe that Muslims who want to kill americans is just a tiny perverted sect of the religion. It may not be a 1:1 ratio, but its a lot higher than anyone is willing to admit.

Sure, the terrorist movement we have right now is overwhelmingly Muslim, there's no doubt about that. But there are over 1 billion Muslims in the world. If would terrorists constituted a significant portion of that population we would be seeing a lot more death and destruction world wide.

Bottom line is that this cannot be Christianity vs. Islam. No one wins in that scenario. If that is what the Muslim world perceives we are very unlikely to be able to prevent further terrorist acts against Americans (and our allies) here and abroad.