9/11—Six Years Later

Contrary to the claims of President Bush, the United
States is not only just as vulnerable to terrorist
attacks as it was in 2001, it is more vulnerable. This
is due directly to the blunders and negligence of the
Bush administration.

For one thing, the U.S.

borders and

ports remain wide open. There has been no serious
effort on behalf of the federal government to thwart the

invasion (and that is

exactly what it is) of illegal aliens

across our southern border.

Not only has President
Bush done

nothing to secure our borders, he has just last week
opened the door for

Mexican trucks to come unimpeded across our southern
border. These trucks will have free access to our entire
country.

Can one imagine the
amount of

drug trafficking,

illegal aliens, and even

potential terrorists that will be smuggled across
our borders in these trucks? Plus, think of the safety
concerns these drivers and trucks will bring to
America`s highways.

In addition, the Bush
administration has done nothing to

slow the flow of legal immigration from countries
that our own State Department identifies as
"terrorist" nations. Virtually every Muslim country
in the Middle East routinely sends students and
professionals to the U.S. via student visas, work visas,
etc. They even serve in America`s armed forces and in
our

security agencies.

This is insane!

Yet, President Bush
would have us believe that he is fighting a "war on
terrorism" by

invading Iraq—a country that had absolutely nothing
to do with 9/11. However, the war in Iraq has done
little to fight terrorism, and has done much to assist
it.

Instead of invading a
country with no ties to 9/11, we should have followed
Congressman Ron Paul`s advice. Congress should have
passed H.R. 3076, the

September 11 Marque and Reprisal Act of 2001, and
sent our forces on a specific and narrow mission to take
out bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

According to

Paul,

"A letter of marque and
reprisal is a constitutional tool specifically designed
to give the president the authority to respond with
appropriate force to those non-state actors who wage war
against the United States while limiting his authority
to only those responsible for the atrocities of that
day. Such a limited authorization is consistent with the
doctrine of just war and the practical aim of keeping
Americans safe while minimizing the costs in blood and
treasure of waging such an operation."

This is precisely what
President Thomas Jefferson did when America`s ships were
confronted with

Barbary Pirates on the high seas.

A few days following the
attacks on 9/11, and drawing from our own history and
Constitution, Congressman Paul proposed the following to
his fellow members of Congress:

"If we can`t or won`t
define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be
endless. How many American troops are we prepared to
lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many
innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we
willing to see killed? How many American civilians will
we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we
prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we
sacrifice?

"The founders and
authors of our Constitution provided an answer for the
difficult tasks that we now face. When a precise
declaration of war was impossible due to the vagueness
of our enemy, the Congress was expected to take it upon
themselves to direct the reprisal against an enemy not
recognized as a government. In the early days the
concern was piracy on the high seas. Piracy was one of
only three federal crimes named in the original
Constitution.

"Today, we have a

new type of deadly piracy, in the high sky over our
country. The solution the founders came up with under
these circumstances was for Congress to grant letters of
marque and reprisal. This puts the responsibility in the
hands of Congress to direct the President to perform a
task with permission to use and reward private sources
to carry out the task, such as the elimination of Osama
bin Laden and his key supporters. This allows narrow
targeting of the enemy. This effort would not preclude
the president`s other efforts to resolve the crisis, but
if successful would preclude a foolish invasion of a
remote country with a forbidding terrain like
Afghanistan- a country that no foreign power has ever
conquered throughout all of history.

"Lives could be saved,
billions of dollars could be saved, and escalation due
to needless and senseless killing could be prevented."
[Ron
Paul speech in the House of Representatives,
September 25, 2001]

Had we followed Dr.
Paul`s counsel, Osama bin Laden and most of his al-Qaeda
terrorists would no doubt be dead, our troops would not
be bogged down in another no-win war in Iraq, and
America would not be hated and despised by almost
everyone in the world as it is today.

Following

the attacks on 9/11, the world (for the most part)
held America in sympathy. Therefore, a narrowly focused,
constitutional, and direct reprisal would have been
completely understood and supported by virtually all of
the world`s leaders and peoples.

As it is now, the United
States is viewed around the world as an imperialistic
and warmongering monster. Not to mention the kind of
resentment and animosity our invasion of Iraq has
produced among Muslim people throughout the world.

In fact, our invasion
and occupation of Iraq is al-Qaeda`s biggest recruitment
tool. As a result, there are actually more al-Qaeda
terrorists in Iraq today than there were before we
invaded Iraq.

Plus, just as Ron Paul
warned, the Bush administration and a compliant congress
have used the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to assault the
constitutional liberties of the American people. The

USA Patriot Act has all but demolished the 4th
Amendment, and has
turned America into a

virtual surveillance society. As far as liberty is
concerned, we have far more to fear from Washington,
D.C., than from Baghdad.

George W. Bush`s
decision to invade Iraq will go down in history as one
of the biggest and

most dangerous blunders of all time. I am not sure
that America will fully recover from this debacle for
the next half century.

When one considers the
moral failures, the economic ramifications, the strain
on military readiness, the rise of anti-American hatred,
the potential for future terrorism, and the loss of
America`s allegiance to "just war" philosophy
surrounding the Iraq war, the total damage to our
country is incalculable.

It makes one wonder
whether the 9/11 attackers did not win after all.

Correction:
I need to correct
something I said in my last column. [09/08/07
– Thoughts On The Larry Craig Scandal]In
the column, I referred to Alan Stang`s book

Not Holier Than Thou, in which he points
out that President Bush has appointed numerous known
homosexuals to high public office, just as did his
predecessor, Bill Clinton. I included in that list
former Massachusetts Governor Paul Cellucci, who was
appointed as U.S. Ambassador to Canada. I misquoted Alan
Stang in that statement. Cellucci is not homosexual.
However, his record as governor is extremely

"pro-homosexual," which is the way I should
have worded it. I apologize for the error.

Dr. Chuck Baldwin is the
pastor of Crossroad Baptist Church in Pensacola,
Florida. He hosts a

weekly radio show. His
website is

here.