Oracle Online

As great of a job as our military men and women are doing, they can’t be everywhere at once. So instead of a massive military presence combing through the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border, disrupting future terrorist attacks, the vast majority of our troops are working to restore law and order in a chaotic Iraq.

We have provided Osama bin Laden just the propaganda he wanted for recruitment purposes.

President Bush made a huge mistake when he failed to attack a surrounded bin Laden in Tora Bora with manpower similar to that which he would later use in Iraq. With bin Laden still at large and America bogged down in Iraq, al-Qaida’s call of jihad against America is stronger than ever. Can you blame the Islamic world for hating America, when we invade Iraq without international support and under the guise that the country is a threat to us considering Iraq’s terrorist connections and WMDs, in the process killing tens of thousands of family members and friends, and then, after the fact, realizing that our initial reasons to go to war were intelligence errors? When placing the Iraq situation alongside an already tense relationship, it’s only logical to conclude that extremists will be born, and hopefully our country will have strengthened our defenses before they attempt to execute another 9/11.

We have isolated ourselves from a world that we finally had on our side after 9/11.

Arguably, no president in history has squandered as large an opportunity as Bush. Shortly after 9/11,
France was helping drop bombs on the Taliban and formerly hostile countries were taking a leading role in helping root out terrorism from within. At the time, things were looking bright. And then we unilaterally went to war in Iraq.

North Korea went nuclear while we were focused upon Iraq. In addition to now having nuclear weapons capable of striking California, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Il has made his hatred for America and his willingness to sell his military technology no secret. One cannot doubt that he’d be willing to deal with al-Qaida, considering he was crazy enough to watch two million people die of starvation while amassing the world’s largest collection of Daffy Duck cartoons.

Fortunately, we do not have to put up with four more years of “more of the same.” Hope is on the horizon. John Kerry, realizing that we cannot alone be fighting the enemy, has campaigned heavily upon rebuilding old alliances and working to create new ones. These allies have an interest in seeing a free and stable Iraq, and with his statesmanlike efforts hopefully many of those countries will provide troops in Iraq to take some of the burden off of ours. John Kerry’s plan of doubling the number of Special Forces in operation would in the future prevent tragedies such as allowing bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora. And Kerry’s plan of directly engaging North Korea, which the international community has long wanted, is certainly a better option than Bush has provided.

- Mike Pesko