THESE WORDS FROM 1776 ARE SO CLOSE TO WHAT NEEDS TO BE SAID TODAY. THEY AGAIN PROVE THE ENDURING QUALITY OF OUR COUNTRY
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 "Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then ask yourself, What should be the reward of such sacrifices?   Are we just to do nothing?  To allow the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth?   I detest any submission to a people who have either ceased to be human, or  have not virtue enough to feel their own wretchedness!   If ye love comfort better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom - go from us in peace.  We ask not your counsels or arms.  Crouch down and lick the hands of your master.  May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" ...........

Samuel Adams, 1776

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More on the reason for action.

Weakness Invites Aggression:  No Justice, No Peace

"Soon after the (1983 military barracks) bombing (in Beirut which killed 241 Marines), American forces quit Lebanon. And 18 years later, we have yet to 'identify, track, apprehend, prosecute, and punish' the killers who butchered those Marines.  Or the ones who had earlier butchered 49 Americans at the US embassy in Beirut.  Or the ones who hijacked TWA 847 in 1985 and killed US Navy diver Robbie Stethem.  Or the ones who kidnapped CIA Officer William Buckley that same year and tortured him to death.  Or the ones who hanged Marine Lt. Col. William Higgins in 1989.  Or the ones who seized one US citizen after another -- Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Alann Steen, Frank Reed, and Joseph Cicippio, among others -- and held them hostage underbrutal conditions.

"None of these outrages aroused the fury of the US government. Despite all the American blood on their hands, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah were allowed to operate without hindrance, while the regimes in Damascus and Tehran that financed and sheltered them were never forced to pay a price for their hostile behavior. . . . All this and more the vicious men (behind the 911 attacks) saw. And they concluded that America was rich but cowardly, mighty in arms but weak in spirit, unwilling to fight for its principles or to risk its sons in battle. America, they decided, had gone soft. And so the time had come to attack."

- Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby