Abstract: We must take ground vital to the enemy and refuse to yield it under any conditions.  No security measure is perfect save death for the terrorists.

I’ve managed to wade through the first hundred and fifty-odd pages of the 9-11 Commission’s final report and, I must say, I’m actually impressed.  From what I’ve read (both here and elsewhere) it seems to me that, despite the ugly tone of its public hearings, the Commission has actually done a fair and impartial job.  More than anything else, I think the report reinforces one fundamental point: sooner or later, the terrorist will always get through.  All internal security measures, whether they may be, are inherently imperfect.  In order for any homeland defense to prevent all terrorist attacks, one would have to design a system that is 100% effective or, in other words, which cannot be stopped by human error, technological failure, deception, evasion, or disruption.  We can spend a trillion dollars on homeland defense and yet it remains highly likely that some clever Jihadist with a box cutter, a book of matches, or some other previously benign object, will get through and murder our people. 

Think about this for a second: what, today, stops al-Qaeda from sending a half-dozen men with butane lighters and buckets of accelerants into our dry forests?  What, conceivably, could stop them?  The answer is simple and frightening: pretty much nothing.  By the time that we realized any given fire was arson, the Mohammed al-Firebug will be preparing to burn down the town fifty miles down the road.  If all of the law enforcement officials Virginia, Maryland, Washington, DC and the Federal Government couldn’t track down a pair of bumbling nutcases killing people at a prodigious clip with a car-mounted sniper rifle, what makes you think that California, Oregon, or Washington cops are going to have any better luck with a half dozen Jihadist arsonists? 

That, of course, is just one (already widely speculated upon) scenario of terror.  Yes, stern measures may well be able to stop Islamists from hijacking planes and crashing them into tall buildings again, but they’re not likely to stop them from buying a pair of M-60’s and taking it to an Elementary School or embarking on a campaign of assassination against local politicians.  When terrorists go up against a democratic society, the terrorists tend to operate with impunity unless the society they face ceases to behave in a democratic fashion.  Terrorism works because it is perfectly designed to exploit the weaknesses of freedom. 

If terrorists did take to shooting up, say, schools and shopping malls, then how exactly would we stop them?  Ban all guns?  Well, someone might try, but they wouldn’t do any good even if they did since terrorists would still be able to acquire the weapons they need with impunity while honest citizens would be deprived of their means of rapid response.  Set up check points every five miles along the road and deploy troops everywhere?  That’d require any army of millions.  Ultimately, the best solution to such a conundrum would probably be to encourage neighbourhoods to form local militia units and arm them with some serious firepower but, even then, the terrorists would simply move on the next exploitable weakness. 

If everywhere Abu Blow-up goes there are people with guns and a willingness to use them he’ll just try something else.  He’ll fill a micro-syringe with deadly poison and visit every supermarket in the area or go home, put on his warmest exploding court, and go to a hockey game.  If the terrorist is here and wants to attack, he (or one of his friends) will find a way.  The only possible way to stop them would be for the United States to resort to totalitarian measures of the most extreme sort: random searches on the streets, internal passports, and the like.

This may sound pessimistic, but it isn’t, for there’s another solution and it is, in fact, the option that we’ve chosen: we have to confront the terrorists overseas and kill them.  It’s really a very simple thing: either we kill them in Baghdad or we let them kill us in Boston.  The problem that we deal with is foreign in origin and it can only be solved on foreign battlefields.

It was a very foolish move, I think, on the part of the Bush Administration to not pitch the case for Iraq in these terms as well as others.  Since terrorists, by nature, seek to hide the only option available to us is to force them into the open and then meet them in battle.  Since al-Qaeda and the other various manifestations of modern Islamism claim to represent all of Islam and to be fighting for a restoration of the glories of the old Caliphate, they can only command the allegiance of the people so long as they can bring the promise of victory.  The people will care not at all to hear of any but the most extreme strikes against the West if the United States and the rest of the Crusader nations can take and hold Moslem lands.  The entire credibility of al-Qaeda rests upon its ability to pitch itself as a successful defender of Islam against the Infidel West.  If the Jihadists can do nothing but senselessly murder innocent Iraqis and get killed while attempting to kill Americans, who will then rally to their cause?

We place too little emphasis on the psychology of terrorism.  It is silly, and fundamentally dangerous, for us to present that terrorism is simply a result of some irrational, insane, or otherwise deranged impulse.  The plain truth is that, based upon decades of recent evidence, terrorism works and, in most cases, works very well.  After all, how was Israel forced to withdraw from Southern Lebanon?  Why does a “Palestinian Authority” now exist?  How has Britain been forced onto the defensive in Ireland?  Why did the United States leave Somalia and Lebanon?  Why does FARC control a third of Columbia?  Terrorism works, especially against democracies where leaders cannot see the future beyond the next month’s opinion polls.  People in the Islamic world (and elsewhere) side with al-Qaeda, in large measure, because it is perfectly rational to believe that, in the long term, Islam will win its war against America. 

That’s why going into Iraq (and staying there) is so important to our security in the long term.  If the Moslem comes to see that al-Qaeda, despite losing thousands of its own, has achieved nothing in Iraq but the murder of countless innocents and galvanization of support for the new, American-approved, regime among the Iraqi public as a whole, they will turn against the monster that they have created and cheered on.  Though it has not been much reported upon in the West, there are numerous cases of those foreign contingents of Jihadists who marched so proudly into Iraq a year ago now pulling out, battered, humbled, and meeting a hostile reception in the nations to which they are retiring.

Consider this for a moment: only a very tiny percentage of people are willing to engage in terrorism under any circumstances.  Only a fraction of that is willing to engage in suicide terrorism.  Of that fraction, only a handful is prepared to engage in suicide terrorism on behalf of a losing cause and, among that handful, are a group of people who are, for the most part, very prone to getting themselves killed elsewhere. 

Wherever the lands of Islam are perceived to be encroached upon (Israel, the Kashmir, Chechnya, etc.) the Islamists appear with arms and tend to die in great numbers.  They, as the most stalwart defenders of their cause, are as determined to defend their lands as we would be if foreign nations marched into Washington, Florida, Texas, and Maine. 

Call it Dien Bien Phu with better tactics, better weapons, and better logistics.  You cannot let the enemy simply strike where he wishes, responding as he wishes.  The only option is to take and hold ground that he cannot possibly yield to you, forcing him to give battle and divert his resources.

In speaking of this war, I am fond of quoting something Abraham Lincoln once said of the Civil War.  The Union would prevail, he said, once he found a General who could comprehend the terrible arithmetic of the situation.  The North outweighed the South in both men and materiel.  All that was necessary to bring victory was to find someone who could bring those advantages to bear in a crushing campaign of attrition, as Grant eventually did in 1864 and 1865.

There’s only one way to stop the terrorist: to kill him, and to do it sooner rather than later.  By forcing battle in Iraq and elsewhere we are making another 9-11 less likely because we are killing in battle the very people who would execute such an attack and, as our endeavour appears increasingly successful, we are discouraging others from following them.