Winning hearts and minds

In Iraq, the US has been making a huge effort to bring stability and peace. The people responsible for the violence are the largely the Iraqis themselves, attacking their own people and our troops. These terrorists have a huge amount of resentment towards the US, and view us as their mortal enemy or even an enemy of God. What they have to realize is that the US is trying to bring peace, but they are blinded by their own hatred.

In war, yes, we are supposed to kill our enemy, but we are not fighting a conventional enemy. We have already broken the borders and occupied the country. In WWII, this would be a victory. But in Iraq, the populous in general is against us. We don’t have an enemy that we can drop 10,000 bombs on and call it a day. Beating this enemy can be done in two ways: killing every militiaman, or getting them to want peace. The killing is obviously very necessary, but we have to be careful not to kill civilians if we want any Iraqis to like us and the government we are creating. This is not just a war against a country; it’s a war against an idea. That idea is using terror, with weapons and radicalism, to gain power over others. We’re not just killing enemy troops, but also killing the terrorist ideology (or, trying, or, wishing we could). Now that we’re in Iraq, we have to be seen as peacekeepers and protectors who care for the Iraqi people; if we didn’t, we would’ve left years ago.

Planning our airstrikes, which are very lethal and effective, is important to showing that we’re acting for peace. If we pummel every target we want, many civilians will die, and there will be even more hatred toward us, which will cause more loyalty to terrorist organizations. Planning a bombing isn’t perfect, but it’s better than what’s happened in the past. Minimizing casualties will instill less bitterness in citizens nearby. But when it comes to desperate situations (US troops outnumbered and in danger of being pummeled), more brutal acts are permissible to save our soldiers. This war on terrorism is more complicated than other wars we’ve fought. No treaty or surrender from a leader can end it; we have to end it in the mind of every Iraqi and terrorist.