Freedom fighter or terrorist, who is to determine? When it comes to the greater good of the U.S., our government does!

I've served in Iraq have plenty of friends who have served in Afghanistan, South America, southeast Asia, and Africa. The general consensus from those of us on the ground is that the U.S. is too delicate with its actions in terrorist conflict environments. Terrorists are quick to insult our nation and its countrymen, behead or citizens and run free. The U.S. moves into the area and then lets the media run the campaign. Those of us trained to handle the situation are left to stand with no authority to do our jobs.

Pull the media out, send us in; we'll generate the reports to be sent home. For every kidnapped and/or beheaded American there should be one hundred dead terrorists. These are zealots who gladly give their lives for almost nothing more than a sound-bite on Al Jezeera. The only way to deal with them is to let them and their supporting culture know that it is too costly to harm our citizens. They attack New York; we eliminate one of their small cities entirely. They behead one of our citizens; we hang one hundred of their people. They use a dirty bomb, we MOAB a major metropolitan area, simple as that. Make it so costly and horrific to attack us that they won't contemplate doing it.

Sent by S.R. Davis | 2:58 PM ET | 04-28-2008

Thank you, S.R. Davis, for providing us with a recipe for embracing the evil we purport to oppose. Your recipe would make terrorists of us all.

You cannot make the world a safer place for Americans by destroying cultures which produce terrorists. Not only would we not be safer, we would be in ever greater danger as the rest of the world turns on us to protect themselves from our "benevolence."

Your recipe refers to "they" and "them." Who are they, exactly? Arabs? That excludes Iran and North Korea, and includes our ally, Saudi Arabia. Muslims? That includes (besides the Saudis) Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation of the world, a total population of 1 billion people. Not to mention a couple of million Americans. Iraqis? Hell, man, you were sent to liberate them, not kill them.

We are a free and open society, one of a very few on the planet. Most of us oppose other Americans like you who want to change that. If we are to become the terrorists we seek to destroy, we will do it in the light of day, not in a media-free zone.

Our choices are to "go Roman," as described above, or to talk with those who would kill us. Churchill reminds us that "jaw-jaw is better than war-war."

Choose soon.

Sent by Steve Jones | 3:43 PM ET | 04-28-2008