Hunt continues in 'their' back yard Published Sept. 10, 2003 By Staff Sgt. Russell Wicke 455th Expeditionary Operations Group Public Affairs BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- Two years after America took a sucker punch from terrorists at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. military is still actively hunting down al-Qaida and Taliban forces in their own back yard. Col. James Whitmore, 455th Air Expeditionary Wing commander here, reminds those back home this war cannot be won quickly. “We will remain in Afghanistan as long as it takes,” Whitmore said. “Terrorists are people you have to deal with sooner or later. We’d prefer to take care of business in their back yard, not ours. We’re not going to wait for them to come to us again.”Whitmore, who was in the Pentagon during the Sept. 11 attacks, said he is glad to be here taking the fight to the terrorists.“A lot of this is personal to me,” he said. “We lost many great co-workers on that day.” Whitmore said he believes there is a need for the U.S. military to be in Afghanistan.“September 11 was our wake-up call,” he said. “That’s when we decided to proactively and aggressively go after the terrorists. They put zero value on human life, especially Westerners. They’ve proven that they won’t hesitate to take the lives of innocent people.”Although results from this war are sometimes difficult to see from here, Whitmore said there has been significant progress since American boots hit the dirt here in December 2001.The U.S. military has taken control of terrorist strongholds in this country. For example, Bagram Air Base was once used as an al-Qaida refuge. “We’re successfully denying terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan,” said Army Maj. David Rasmussen, 10th Mountain Division 2nd Battalion 87th Infantry Regiment executive officer. Rasmussen is serving in Afghanistan for the second time since Operation Enduring Freedom began. He said there has been noteworthy change for the better in the fight against terrorism: The terrorists have resorted to more hiding and less fighting.“They know they can’t take us on directly, so they are trying to fight us asymmetrically,” Whitmore said. “We monitor their activities very closely here, and they know that. Anything that we can do to keep them off balance and unable to organize is helpful.”Brute force, however, is not the only advantage U.S. forces have.“We also have economic pressure being applied to these terrorist groups,” Whitmore said. American forces are widely welcomed here because of the stability and economic growth that has developed in the past two years, he said. “Our mission is to disrupt their activities and deny them sanctuary,” Whitmore said. “We’ve made a significant impact on their ability to orchestrate and execute sustained operations.”According to Whitmore, it is necessary for the United States to provide humanitarian aid so Afghanistan can speed up the process of developing a stable government. And that is the path that is being taken with provincial reconstruction teams.“We’re building schools, digging wells, providing reconstruction and even providing medical assistance to the people here,” Rasmussen said. “It is a slow and deliberate improvement for the lives and infrastructure of the Afghan people.“The sooner we can help get the people here self-sufficient, the sooner we can go home,” he said.