Some of you who are familiar with my articles may also know that I have a radio show about twice a week on blogtalkradio.com. I also tend to call in to the shows on occasion and type a few words in chat.

The host of one show acted as though I wanted America to “sit and wait for the next attack” simply because I wasn't in favor of spending billions upon billions of dollars and sinking America further into debt. I told her I wanted to catch the terrorists, just not have a grossly expensive, unneeded, and ruinous war when the US already had the means to do so and not endanger our land.

The CIA? NSA? Maxwell Smart, Agent of CONTROL? We can't get rid of them and perhaps we shouldn't, yet we should definitely tweak their job description a bit just to keep them from engaging in makework projects that aren't geared towards actually picking up enough of any real terrorists to the point where they could instead truly go about the task of shutting down their game.

The military? Ask yourself, do we really need that many soldiers to snare a few battle weary dregs of humanity? Prolonged wars in the Middle East have needlessly drained our resources, brought no peace, endangered the lives of hundreds of thousands of servicemen & women, and have distanced ourselves from valuable allies.

A select group of specialists can cheaply bribe one associate of the baddies to push a button on a cell phone or transponder, gas the entire crew at his location & then wait for a few troops to jump in and sort out, then cart off the malcontents to the pokey. Lather, rinse, repeat until nobody wants to be a terrorist boss anymore. When you're fighting an enemy that our leaders claim “isn't afraid to die”, catching them alive and hungover from knockout gas just might be the ticket to scare enough of them out of this type of racket.

Job done on a budget that won't end up financing a protracted war with way too many committed troops, that is ruining our already bankrupt economy. Please don't forget that Haliburton and other conflicts of interest the president and his cronies are joined at the hip with, bill you taxpayers for the tab to rebuild what the military operations constantly bomb.

What our leaders are loathe to tell you is the sad fact that wars are financed by debt. Our war debt is owned by foreign powers, sometimes with their own nuclear barrage pointed at our country. China comes to mind, and they would be pleased as punch to have a claim, legitimate or not, on a chunk of American real estate should the US default on it's war debt. Military bases have been unnecessarily closed on our east and west coasts. Troops brought home could provide the vital beefing up of our shores.

Will some of the real terrorists find better places to hide? Of course they will. The United States has plenty of satellites orbiting the planet that can read a newspaper from space. If the bad guys go outside they'll be seen. If they can be seen, they can be grabbed.

The question remains, do we sacrifice our country in a vain effort to save it? If our leaders are really serious about ending terrorism then the old failed plan needs this new plan that won't fail us because it keeps us intact while it protects us. Now isn't that what we really say we want?

With Liberty,

Dan Steward