Our Man in the Trenches
Reader comment on item: Convicting [Ali al-Timimi,] the "Paintball Sheikh"

Submitted by Dave M. O'Neill (United States), May 2, 2005 at 18:46

Again I must repeat that this type of digging out of crucial facts about the war on terror is as important as the actual military war being fought by our soldiers, the IDF, the Iraqi military, etc,--please keep it up. Why not put this item in your New York Sun column. And/or ask Seth Lipsky to put in on the front page---anything to shame the Times for their anti-anti-terror posture.

A word of caution. You state "...the current war is not against terrorism but the ideas that lead to that terrorism, namely arising out of radical Islam.". However, it is clearly BOTH a war against the existing terrorists and against those spreading the ideas and trying to recruit muslims and others into their fanaticism. In fact , the success of any campaign against the spreading of terrorist ideology depends almost totally on the military defeat of the current practioners of terror-- the Times' editorial page, all the liberal think-tanks and Thomas Friedman notwithstanding. If we (along with the Iraqi military) do not militarily defeat the Islamo-terrorists in Iraq our main purpose in going there---to increase our and others security against terrorism--will be in grave jeopardy. Unfortunately the terrorists understand, along with General Douglas MacArthur, that, in war, there is no substitute for victory.

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