“Not since the fall of Saddam have I felt better about the war on terror,” said Kay Binzer of Beavercreek. “Our military are the best in the world. No matter how long it took, you cannot run, you cannot hide. We will hunt you down and take you out!”
Steve Turhone of Huber Heights said Sunday’s killing of bin Laden takes “the wind out of the sails,” of the al-Qaida terrorist organization. “I think organized terror is getting old as a concept and unraveling,” Turhone said. “But we need to stay the course and continue rooting them out. If we give up and leave now, they could regroup and rearm to spread terror again.”
Miami Valley residents appear ambivalent about reducing troop levels in Afghanistan. “Maybe we should start to look at it a little bit,” said Matt Acord of Harrison Twp., “but I also know we just ticked off a whole lot of people who are really going after us now. So I don’t think we should do it right away, but it does help that was our original reason for going there.”
Mark Ensalaco, a terrorism expert at the University of Dayton, believes that opposition to the war will grow now that bin Laden is gone. “It is 10 years of war,” he said, “and a lot of Americans are frustrated and want us out. The war is over in the minds of most Americans because the reason for going there was to destroy al-Qaida, and bin Laden’s death is mission accomplished.”
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