[Broken Arrow]

Alright, I guess I'll throw in my pence as well....

vsjhoc brings up a very good question. Unfortunately, it's also a question that I do not believe can ever be answered satisfactorily. In a way, we've always been at war to some capacity, and we will continue to be so in the foreseeable future.

I think a more... feasible question is to ask whether we are at least safer now than we have been before Sept. 11. Because, in the end, that's what all this is effort and sacrifice is for, right?

Sept. 11 was suppose to be a retaliatory attack from Osama Bin Laden, who was furious for our involvement in the first Gulf war. A war, I may add, that most of the other nations have supported our involvement with. This, in turn, made Bin Laden look like the bad guy to the rest of the world.

What I want to know, though, is how in the world did we go from Bin Laden, who's hiding in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to Saddham Hussein in Iraq? Our administration had to sell the war hard as a war against terror itself and WMDs. The problem is, the link to Bin Laden is rather thin, and we didn't find any WMDs.

But nevermind that. What really bothers me is that most of the world disagrees with our involvement in Iraq, and many abroad are beginning to think that Bin Laden may have been right about us all along. On top of that, Iraq has become a massive, new breeding ground for al-Qaeda recruits.

Oh, and considering that 9/11 was revenge for the first Gulf War, one can only wonder what the revenge for the second one will look like. And make no mistake, there are many more radicals out there now that will throw away their lives in the attempt to take revenge on us.

So, did this administration accomplish the vital mission of making our country safer? My opinion is an unequivocal "NO". If anything, we are in much more danger than before 9/11.

The ONLY thing we can do now is to somehow bring peace and prosperity to Iraq. If we don't do that, United States will be even more danger than we already are now, and I believe the best answer is with diplomatic and humanitarian aid over the course of the next decade or more.

But of course, before that can even happen, the country needs to stabilize from the civil war first. The Surge... even if it's half-baked, at least addresses that initial problem at hand.

We may not have entered the war in Iraq for the right reasons, but like it or not, we are most definitely fighting for the right reasons now: To make our country safer. And... that's why I support the Surge.