Owatonna, MN Correspondent- With the recent terrorist attacks in the New York City area taking more lives and damaging more property, the question must be asked: Is terrorism here to stay? To answer that, we must ask two other questions. The first is why are terrorists attacking us? The second is can either side prevail in this new type of guerilla warfare?

Terrorists from the Middle East presumably attack Westerners because we imposed ourselves and our will into the middle of their lands without their blessing or permission. We “invaded” mainly to access their cheap oil, and then proceeded to set up arbitrary political boundaries and installed rulers friendly to our interests. Unfortunately, many of these puppet rulers turned out to be the worst sort of despots. All during our “invasion” we paid little heed to Muslim culture, religion, or tribal sovereignty. Is it any wonder radical elements feel the need to fight back? U.S. citizens would most certainly fight back against any foreign invader who declared war on us, or even on an invader who didn’t.

The question of one side winning this war is difficult to answer. How does a sovereign nation declare victory against an unknown, uncountable enemy? Even if we bomb the crap out of the entire Middle East, primarily nations whom we believe have supported terrorists against us, there is no guarantee that rogue elements who still feel disrespected won’t continue attacking Western targets.

Moreover, can a small group of terrorists ever declare victory over the most powerful nation in the world? What if we went so far as to “surrender” and cave in to all the terrorists’ demands? What would that entail? Most importantly, the disbanding of or disintegration of the nation of Israel. Past that, would terrorist victory require a total retreat of everything Western from countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Dubai, and Oman? It is hard to imagine Middle Easterners who have adopted western ways completely giving up what they have become accustomed to in order to return to some sort of tribal existence that characterized Muslim life only a few decades ago. This seems to be an impossible scenario.

What if the United States took a “slightly less radical approach” and essentially pulled out of the Middle East (in effect, taking our toys and going home)? Disgruntled Muslims might still feel slighted and continue to attack us with suicide bombers and localized attacks, just to “teach us a lesson” and make sure we do not try any funny business in the future.

Since the prospect of any of the previous scenarios coming true seems remote, the logical conclusion is that terrorism will continue unabated, with ebbs and flows of intensity depending upon the latest political and diplomatic shenanigans. Since terrorist attacks have literally become main street, mainstream events, it appears that terrorism has indeed become the New Normal.