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National Security — We Must Strike First
By Major Kevin E. Creed, U.S. Army, Kuwait
Our country has been attacked. Our enemies have used a "first strike" capability to kill almost three thousand innocent people and destroy a section of New York and Washington.
If I live to be a thousand years old I will never understand why they did this, or why they hate us. But I cannot help thinking about the last few minutes of life for each of the passengers on those three airplanes before they were killed by the terrorists. At some point those passengers and the cabin crew knew what was happening; just imagine the terror that those poor people endured. I bet they all wished that the pilots had had a weapon to defend the cabin.
Given the facts as we know them to be, we must accept that our enemies are irrational zealots who will stop at nothing to gain their objective. They will strike again. This time they will not be content to just kill a couple of thousand people or destroy a few buildings. They will attack to leave a lasting scar. They will use weapons of mass destruction. Our enemies could easily import such a weapon into any of the harbors on our coast and explode it with horrible results. It is my personal opinion that no matter how much money we spend or no matter how many government agencies we create, we can never adequately protect ourselves from such a dangerous scenario.
Terrorism cannot exist without money and support. I believe that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction and will supply those weapons to terrorists. Because the risk is so real and the potential harm is so great, we must take decisive action to defend ourselves. We must strike first.
We are a good country. Generally we are generous and kind. We have tried to be honest and play fair. We make mistakes but we try hard to do good things. We have had war forced upon us and then we have rebuilt the countries of our enemies to improve the quality of life everywhere. We are living proof of the viability of the grand experiment started just 227 years ago—an experiment to show that common people can rule themselves, and that no one elite group has a divine right from God to rule over others. I guess some things never change: there is always some group who will claim that God has given them a divine right to rule.
As a soldier I have sworn an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. It is the same Constitution that protects our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That Constitution also guarantees the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, the right to keep and bear arms and the right to be secure in our homes and possessions, as well as a system of justice to protect us. We must exercise these rights and respect the opinions of others, and we must remember that reasonable minds can disagree. Remember that it is apathy that could kill this country. Most of all we must remain loyal to each other, because we are all in this together. These are the rights and principles that soldiers have sworn to protect and defend.
In light of all this I commend those who exercise their right to be heard on the matter of the pending action here in the Middle East. It is exactly your right to freedom of speech that we defend and protect. Just realize that our enemies are not interested in protecting anyone’s rights or allowing for the pursuit of happiness. Remember that some human hand killed those poor people on 9/11. Someone looked into their eyes and decided to kill them just because they were American, and then they came here to do it. Now some human hand will try to detonate a weapon of mass destruction in the United States, and your soldiers intend to stop them.
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