The attacks on September 11, 2001 did warrant a militarily response, but two wars were not the answer. With nearly a decade of combat, 4,486 military casualties and $5 trillion in costs, the Iraq war is a mistake we should have avoided.

Why is the US a target of international terrorism? It is because the terrorists know that we will over-respond to any attack and in the process hurt ourselves more than than they could ever hurt us.

While overwhelming military aggression would have served as a deterrent to an attack perpetrated by a country, small groups of terrorist cells have no allegiance to any nation and are not discouraged with a declaration of war.

The U.S. played into the enemy’s master plan in the response following the attacks. Al-Qaeda’s goal was to cause immediate and long lasting effects for the U.S. that went far beyond the destruction of the twin towers.

Freedom must sometimes be sacrificed to ensure security, but the terrorists have scared us in to sacrificing too much freedom. This lack of freedom is apparent at the airport where TSA officials have the power to thoroughly search passengers and on the internet where our activity may be monitored without a warrant.

While it made sense to invade Afghanistan to hunt down Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, there was no justification to invade Iraq. At first, our government claimed that there were “weapons of mass destruction.”

Since no such weapons were found the war was then re-purposed to oust terrorist cells, when official reports stated that Al-Qaeda or other terrorist cells did not have a strong foothold in Iraq, the war efforts were then directed to bring democracy to Iraq.

According to Iraqbodycount.com, there are at least 112,000 Iraqi cilvians who have been killed since the start of the conflict. Their deaths cannot be justified since democracy has not yet been taken effect. Iraq is not ready for democracy since there are far too many people in that country who would exploit or undermine it.

We are obligated to bring those who commit terrorist acts to justice, but we should not use the same policies of the past decade. Our response of terrorism should be strong, proportional and well directed.