Maginot mentality will lead to disaster in war on terror

Last weekend the family ventured into France to visit the fantastic Koeningbourg Castle. On the trip back, by happenstance, we passed by Casement 35/3 of the infamous Maginot Line near Markolsheim. Unfortunately, we were running late and could only give the site the once over from the fence.

The Maginot Line was a static defensive line built by France between 1929 and 1940. It consisted of static defenses which stretched from Switzerland to the Ardennes in the North, and from the Alps to the Mediterranean in the South. It was a vast, state-of-the-art, ultra-modern static defensive system. Most of its components were underground, where interconnecting tunnels stretched for kilometers. The line was built to give France a false sense of security from her longtime enemy Germany. It was remarkably effective. The French army, “safe” behind the so called “Great Wall” of France, sipped wine and dined on fine cheeses. Meanwhile, those wily Germans declined to impale themselves on the French army’s prepared defenses. Instead, they simply moved north to invade France through what the French military had deemed Belgium’s “impenetrable” Ardennes forest. In record time, the Germans handed yet another humiliating defeat to what the French call an army.

So what? Well here’s what. Every time you hear some armchair general whine, “we’re not spending enough on homeland defense”, you should think, “we’re not spending enough on the Maginot Line.” In the war on terror, it is a simple fact that we cannot defend every target in America while maintaining an open society. Our path to victory lies in the offensive. Rather than searching for an “exit strategy” in Iraq, we need to pursue a strategy of victory. Rather than trying to figure out how to defend the local Dairy Queen, gas station, grocery and hardware stores from pan-Islmo-terror-fascists, we need to concentrate on finding the terror cells within and taking them out.

A Maginot mentality in the war on terror will lead first to a false sense of security and then to disaster.