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Opinion: What war on terror?

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In light of the horrific recent terrorist attacks in France and now Belgium, I can’t help but ask myself: Why aren’t we winning the war on terror?

I constantly hear various presidents, prime ministers and world leaders claiming that we all need to be vigilant and that we will eventually bring all the world’s terrorists to justice. Yet what I have seen is the strengthening of an army determined to undermine and destroy everything and anything that we in the civilized world hold sacred. So I have decided to contrast how we fought to win World War II as to how we are strategizing to beat the Islamic extremists who are contributing to the gradual decay of our freedoms and liberties as citizens of free nations.

Let’s look first at Pearl Harbor. Our military was attacked by surprise by suicide pilots; we retaliated by dropping atomic bombs on Japan. By wiping out its military, as well as a good number of the Japanese population, the U.S. eliminated the threat of Japan entirely and showed the world the true might of our country. It was this military strength that defined us for the rest of the 20th century.

Next, let’s look at how the Allies brought down Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. First of all, the Allies actually united and fought on the front lines together. The one and only objective was to defeat Hitler. The most effective military campaigns employed by the Allies were to annihilate Berlin, the capital of Hitler’s empire. Every building, every street and every railway was blown to bits until Berlin was just a pile of ruins. The Allies were not as concerned with the citizens of Berlin as they were with defeating Hitler at all costs. Although the loss of innocent lives should not be minimized, it is a necessary evil of war.

Today, we need to take a lesson from the glory of our past. We cannot win a war with words. We cannot win a war when we are not united. We cannot win a war by flying drones. We cannot win a war without civilian casualties. We cannot win a war by being politically correct. We cannot win a war when the media is our enemy and not our advocate. We cannot win a war by telling our enemy everything that we won’t do. We cannot win a war without soldiers on the ground. If we employed our modern-day methods of warfare in the 1940s, we would most likely be goose-stepping down Broadway today.

Nathan Davis is a full-time Nassau County resident. He spends his summers in Mattituck.

Photo credit: Flickr/Brett Levin