This is in response to Wednesday’s letter to the editor “’War on terror’ not a war.” I must disagree with Patrick Poage’s position that calling our “global effort to eliminate terrorists” a war allows al-Qaida and others to justify their actions against our country and our soldiers.
Poage, like many others, seems to have forgotten the terrorist attacks happened prior to our terming of the effort to prevent them a “war.” In the cases of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole and the Sept. 11 attacks, among other incidents, the terrorists didn’t wait for us to “justify” them before attacking us.
Poage also noted that the Obama administration dropped the term “war on terror.” In response, I ask: If our leaders are unwilling to use strong language to describe this “global effort,” how can we assume that they will take strong action to succeed in this conflict?
