Previous Story
No basis for comparison
|
Posted on May 19 2004
I don’t know how deliberate it was that an opinion column advocating bombing the terrorists into submission and thus achieving total victory, rather than leaving it to the United Nations, or trying to win the hearts and minds of unlike-minded peoples (Victory should be the only goal by Bruce Herschensohn) was placed next to this past week’s “On My Mind” in Sunday’s issue—in which I advocated just the opposite.
While that’s what opinion pages are for—and it was an interesting juxtaposition, I would like to note that Herschensohn’s comparison to World War II doesn’t hold up. The people responsible for today’s terrorist acts do not owe allegiance to a single political entity, they do not inhabit a single contiguous area, they are not a unified organized entity. They are far too dispersed. There is no one person one could capture, no one city one could drop an A-bomb on (God forbid!), no one geographic area the U.S. could either bomb or take control over, that would cause the terrorists to stop.
Massive military strength just can’t—and won’t—do the trick this time.
Ruth L. Tighe
Tanapag, Saipan
