American initiative, humanity better weapons against terror

The current posturing and rhetoric of our national leaders and candidates for high office show what ignorant losers they are.

For example, leaders like President Bush, certain presidential candidates and Alaska’s U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens and U.S. Rep. Don Young assert we must stay in Iraq to conquer the terrorists there so we don’t have to fight them in America. This disgusting display of ignorance must surely have America’s enemies screaming with laughter and Islamic terrorists praising Allah for such stupidity.

How so? Our government’s propaganda — including magnifying threats and promoting grief to make us docile — makes it appear the Middle East is the only authorized playpen for the spectacle called fighting terrorism. If Islamic terrorists are really as capable as our government brags, this has made our nation vulnerable to the simplest military attack technique there is — misdirecting attention through a feint.

While we’re “entertained” in Iraq and Afghanistan with mounting casualties, terrorists just have to send blackmailed Hispanics or Caucasians — unknowingly infected with deadly diseases — across the Mexican border to “spy” throughout the United States. Something like this hasn’t happened yet because Islamic terrorists aren’t as smart, dedicated and powerful as propaganda promotes. Yet, if our leaders continue to do things that even a moron can take advantage of, even this won’t help.

So why must we accept our leadership’s justification for failure and irrationality? Libraries are full of better solutions to anybody willing to look. For instance, America’s method of suppressing insurrection and terrorism in Iraq is like trying to exterminate a nest of fire ants by pounding them with a sledge hammer. How about applying military principles of siege? Leadership simply applies all our military strength to lock down passage over all Iraq borders using electronic identity devices readable from a distance. This cuts off arms and support to Sunni, Shiite, Kurd and so-called al-Qaida sympathizers, which enables Iraqis to create their own civil order. Meanwhile, we let more than 20,000 mercenaries in Iraq hired by U.S. contractors actually earn their pay. U.S. troop withdrawal would be inevitable, unless our leadership craves unending war more than victory.

For another instance, our military is obviously being misused in Iraq as nannies for political romper rooms. The skills needed for this are opposed to the skills developed by military training. Furthermore, population addiction to protective military custody naturally suppresses political self-reliance.

How about wielding America’s greatest weapon, the mind-power and initiative of its citizens? Leadership simply mobilizes and assists all Americans and Iraqis to execute one simple program. Sets of 100 or more American families or citizens would simultaneously write each Iraqi family or citizen. Americans would ask what we personally — not our government — could do to best help them. We’d all get tax credits and transport for responses to the consequently sincere requests.

This would get results because the power of terrorists and fanatics has historically depended on irresponsible inhumanity, selfishness and injustice between different peoples. Indeed, remedying this is key to suppressing all the terrorism and cultural conflicts that every generation of angry young men — egged on by bitter old men — practice.

Furthermore, this remedy is driven by historically successful principles. Please recognize war expert Capt. Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart’s military principle of indirect approach, the Bible’s “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and, out of Federalist Papers No. 51, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.”

Why should we put so much trust in empowering human beings with these principles, or any others to be found by anybody looking in libraries? Let founding father Thomas Paine answer: “An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot. It will succeed where diplomatic management would fail. It is neither the Rhine, the Channel nor the Ocean that can arrest progress. It will march on the horizons of the world, and it will conquer.”

By the tragedies of the dead, the sufferings of the maimed and the despair of the dispossessed, I conjure every American to confront what these words mean.

Stuart Thompson is a self-employed Alaskan living in Wasilla.