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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Losing the War on Terror

Since September 11, 2001, the United States has been engaged in the War on Terror and almost exclusively against Muslim extremists.  Who is winning this war?  Who will win this war?  It’s hard to imagine that such large and complex questions might be answered by the act of allowing or disallowing a mosque at Ground Zero, but I submit to you that it is. 

Forget for a moment that the United States engaged this War on two fronts and has yet to really eliminate the enemy or diminish the numbers of their soldiers.  The enemies support for the war is factitious and could diminish quickly – most likely it won’t.  In fact, those numbers have increased at times. 

Forget for a moment that these wars tanked our domestic economy and the world’s economy.  The abilities of productive and competent peoples to regain economic ground and repay debt are repeated throughout history. With more foreign competition in the marketplaces, it may take a while for the United States to define its unique and valuable talents. 

But when the United States denies religious freedom in defiance of the Constitution and embraces ethnocentrism, we have lost the War on Terror.  When the mechanisms by which many generations of vastly different peoples have prospered and helped propel the United States to domination in so many ways are abandoned, we have lost the war.  We will not have lost because we are still fighting, or because we are poorer and now live with less.  We will have lost because we sacrificed a unique and great quality that defined the United States superiority in the first place.  We will begin a habit of destroying other mechanisms that create and promote opportunity and prosperity.  We will begin to be defeated.

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