My grandfather was 19 years old, a sophomore in college, when the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor. He can remember the exact place and time when he heard about the bombings, and the incredible rage he felt. He said that he and his friends weren't as mad about the bombings as they were about the following declaration of war. I was completely taken aback by this sentiment; I had always thought that my grandfather's generation was enthusiastic about the war after Pearl Harbor.

When I asked him why he was upset about the declaration of war, he replied that, while he believed that action needed to be taken, he detested the fact that the politicians were able to sit back in their leather swivel chairs and send hundreds of thousands of Americans to their deaths, in the process uprooting the dreams and families of millions of others.

I had the opportunity to talk to him about the current military action over break, while I was visiting family in San Francisco. He is opposed to any sort of ground war but believes that the air strikes are the right thing to do; his reasoning is that he does not want a draft, and he does not want to see young men die. He and I disagreed on this point. I believe that we must put troops on the ground; we must commit ourselves fully to rooting out the terrorists and bringing them to justice.

Do not mistake me. I abhor war, and want nothing more than for this whole mess to go away. But it's obvious that it will not and that something must be done. I think that everyone can agree that we want the people responsible for planning the attacks of Sept. 11 to be brought to justice. For those who want a peaceful response, it's time to wake up. There is no way to bargain with terrorists; what could you possibly say to someone who is willing to die in order to get attention? If there was some way to bargain with them, don't you think that it would already have been done?

But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Osama bin Laden is responsible for the attacks. Do you know what he wants? He wants to "expel all Western powers from the Islamic world" (whatever that means), and then overthrow the current "liberal" regimes in the Muslim world and establish a Muslim Empire. Does this sound familiar? Hitler comes to mind; as does Stalin. He sees himself as a warrior of God and is more than willing to die to achieve what he claims is God's will. There is no way to reason with a person like him, and he must be stopped.

While I think we are taking steps in the right direction with our air strikes, they are perhaps one of the most cowardly responses that the United States has ever undertaken. To the people of Afghanistan, we are terrorists; we drop our bombs and run away. We are sitting above the range of their primitive anti-aircraft weapons and taking very little risk. This attitude of "let's do what's best for us and not worry about the people" is exactly what made the United States so hated by developing countries. And while we are in no way responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center or the Pentagon, we are not wholly innocent either. Our policies around the world breed hatred, and it is time to put that to an end as well. We need to show the world that we are ready to start taking responsibility, and that starts with committing ground troops to the war against terrorism.

Generations of men have been lost to war, and I sincerely hope that no one else will be killed in stopping these terrorists. However, I am not that stupidly optimistic. We will lose soldiers, and sadly, that is the price we need to pay for decades of mishandling the problems in the Middle East. The world is no longer a place where we can play the part of the happy isolationist; we live in a connected world, and a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We need to stop preaching our views and start acting on them. Let's live our lives by our own moral compass and to Hell with the consequences.