Rick Raw: Afghanistan is Not Vietnam–Al Qaeda and Taliban have to be Defeated

By Rick Grant Commentary rickgrant01@comcast.net

As the eighth anniversary of 9/11 came and went, we were reminded of why we are fighting in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has joined forces with the Taliban to make Afghanistan their countrywide base of operation. More seriously, Admiral Mullen, Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that "the situation in Afghanistan is grim. The Taliban occupy a third of the country."

Presently, there are 68,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan. President Obama said that he will be authorizing at least 21,000 more troops committed to the action. Eight years after 9/11, America’s prime directive still is: We must defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban to prevent more catastropic worldwide terrorist attacks. This is a long term goal.

These crazed fanatics will not stop until they’re either dead or have completed there mission to make the entire world a fundamentalist Islamic empire. And, they’re not thinking of years, but hundreds of years or more. Therefore, we must kill them all so they can’t recruit anymore naive young Islamic suicide bombers, who are enticed with receiving 72 virgins in paradise for becoming a martyr.

Lately, some influential politicians and pundits are saying that, like the Russians, we can’t win in Afghanistan. More significantly, they are comparing Afghanistan with the Vietnam quagmire. Rubbish! This kind of talk hurts our troops, bravely risking their lives to defeat the enemy–an evil force that would turn the world back in time to a Medieval society.

Although, in a major screw up in 2001, we lost our opportunity to kill bin Ladin, he is still inspiring a new generation of Islamic fundamentalists, hell bent to kill Westerners and Jews. Now, he has gone to ground and is protected by a phallanx of radicals.

For a moment, remember the horror of 9/11 and the victims families who are still suffering from grief and PTSD. These ignorant ragheads are a serious thread to our freedom and world peace. We either fight them in the Afghanistan theater of war or we fight them on the streets of America.

Lately, the buzz from the talking heads is about the impossibility of "nation building" in Afghanistan–a primitive oxcart society. It’s not so much that we are nation building, but killing off these barbaric zealots, so that when they are all dead, the Afghan people can take back their own country.