We have to be willing to destroy the enemy

Ralph Peters:

It's not true that the only good terrorist is a dead terrorist. Even dead terrorists aren't good. But at least they're dead.

And that helps.

But political correctness has possessed Washington. It's so bad that even Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who's done a great job in many other respects, parrots the cliché that "we can't kill our way out of this."

Well, folks, there's no other way out of this all-or-nothing struggle with fanatics. Three thousand years of history teach that there's no alternative -- none -- to killing fanatics in large numbers when your enemies are ablaze with religious zeal.

What Gates and countless others really mean is that we're unwilling to kill our way out of this assault on our civilization. So the terrorists keep on killing us.

We tell ourselves that one more charm offensive, one more inept aid program, one more surge of troops who aren't allowed to fight will persuade terrorists on a murderous mission from their god to lay down their arms and run for alderman.

We refuse to see the world through terrorist eyes. Instead, we superimpose liberal-arts-faculty values on bloodthirsty zealots, asking what we've done to make them so angry.

The result? We grant captured terrorists more rights and better treatment than nonviolent offenders in a US county jail. We cater to them at the gentrified prison at Guantanamo (yet the global media insist that Gitmo's just a big torture chamber).

We tell ourselves we'll impress our enemies with our humanitarianism. But how many Gitmo prisoners have turned pacifist or expressed regrets? If you were convinced that you were doing God's will, would you be budged by a captor who gives you priority health care, a religiously correct diet, special worship privileges and free legal counsel? Allah has made his enemies weak . . .

The laws of war provide for the battlefield execution of illegal combatants -- those who refuse to wear uniforms or identifying insignia or who commit atrocities. Instead, we give them flu shots before American citizens can get them.

When a madcap ideologue such as Attorney General Eric Holder tells Congress we mustn't be afraid to try terrorists in our judicial system, he gets it exactly wrong. The terrorists believe we're afraid to kill them. And they're right.

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We do not oppose the trials of terrorist because of fear, but because they are an irrational response to people making war against us. Lawfare is a poor match for warfare with this enemy. It is part of the failed policy of the 90s that led to 9-11.

I use the term destroy rather than kill because it encompasses more than just killing. It includes destroying the infrastructure of terrorism. It is how the Israelis defeated the second intifada. It is how we defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. Certainly killing the enemy is part of the deal, but you have to destroy their ability to move to contact and retreat from contact. You destroy this enemy when you limit their freedom of movement.

Once you have captured the enemy, they should be held until the end of the war or their death, which ever comes sooner. If they are tried for war crimes it should be in a military tribunal.