Saturday, August 6, 2011

R.I.P. SEALs and helo crew

Some Taliban protohuman got lucky and hit one of our helicopters.  Some say it was an with RPG, others speculate that it was a real surface-to-air missile.  Facts aren't all in yet.  But it was a chopper full of SEALs along the the helo crew and some Afghani locals.  The biggest loss of life in any one incidence in the history of the SEALs. 

** Horrible!! **


Image from wikipedia
I idealize America as rather like a beehive: basically a bunch of industrious people getting things done and not bothering anybody.  We come and go; we produce and consume.  In the course of just getting things done, we (almost inadvertently) improve things around us.  The bee, just looking for food, does the flowers great service without even knowing it.  Pollination happens and multiplication follows.  One flower becomes a field of flowers.  Americans offer the entire world a Great Marketplace where things can be exchanged.  Quality of life for both Americans and others is improved.  Like a pharmacologist who toiled making a new drug just wants to get paid his due wages, but a little kid in Africa is cured by that pharmacologist's work.  Do you see what I mean?  Just let us do our thing and we all stand to benefit. 

So the bee pollinates the plant and the birds and the deer eat the fruit that results from the bee's work.  The bee and the bird and the deer all get along fine and mostly ignore each other.  There is balance and there is abundance.  As long as nobody screws with the bee.  Screw with the bee and things change.  The bee doesn't recall its ambassadors.  The bee doesn't seek a bipartisan solution.  The bee doesn't give a half a crap about proportionate response.  Screw with the bee just a little, and now you're in a fight to the death.  Screw with the bee hive and the response is even more dramatic.  The bees will make sure that the one who molests the hive pays dearly.  The bee hive gains a reputation as "something you just don't screw with."  The bees' very ferocity means they don't have to be ferocious very often.  People and critters alike just learn not to screw with the bees.

Therefore, peaceful coexistence is the usual order of things.

That's where I'm at with the War on Terror.  I no longer give half a crap about proportionate response.  Which is just newspeak for "tit-for-tat."  I am not in favor of trading our guys for theirs.  I am in favor of Grossly Disproportionate Response.  We have the means to utterly destroy every place the Taliban might be hiding.  There is no good reason for our nation's best to be making themselves vulnerable to ground fire from wife-beating cavemen.  There is no good reason to be engaging the Taliban "at their level."  There is no good reason for this to be a battle between guys-with-guns against other guys-with-guns.  While our guys-with-guns are exceptionally well trained, well equipped and well disciplined and their guys-with-guns are morons, sometimes the morons get lucky.

Enough!

Bomb.  Bomb.  Punish.  Bomb.  Show the world what happens when the American beehive is screwed with.  What about all the non-combatants who will be killed or injured?  Isn't that totally inhumane and unjust?  Two kids are standing next to the beehive when one kid whacks it with a stick.  The bees come out and sting both.  Only one kid is truly guilty but they both feel the pain.  So it should be in dealing with terrorists.  Let the non-combatants say to themselves "We need to get these terrorists out of here before America destroys our entire village!"  The price of hanging out with kids who whack bees' nests is pain.  The price of abetting or even tolerating terrorist activity must also be pain.  If the price of tolerating terrorists is just a "friendly American presence that provides security and sometimes shoots bad guys" then the population will tolerate terrorists in their midst forever.  And our guys will continue dying forever.  Unacceptable.  Make a vicious, bloody example of these troglodytes and in the long run the will actually be less blood shed.

20 comments:

  1. PS - don't go blowing up my metaphor with "but honeybees die when they sting!" I don't wanna hear it.

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  2. I like your metaphor a whole lot. And I say AMEN to all your points. Crank up the Enola Gay!

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  3. The rules of engagement are all about prolonging the war, so war profiteers can keep the money coming in. We could have won this thing years ago.

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  4. Dan - Yep. I don't mind the idea of the rest of the world going "holy crap! America just went nuclear! We better shut up!"

    Trestin - Could have and should have. I bet you've seen RoE BS that would boggle my mind.

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  5. I am very open to carpet bombing.

    Wall-to-wall, ya'all.

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  6. Agreed!
    We send our BEST to win or -let's get them out!
    thank you for stopping by my site-
    will be back here often-
    Carol-CS

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  7. Its time to turn the whole damn country into a parking lot!

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  8. We need to get our of Afghanistan. It is a hopeless cause.

    In the old days we would have rolled in with B-52's and flattened that village and everything around it as an example to others.

    But we can't fight wars like than anymore, so we're better of staying the hell out.

    Let Pakistan, China and Russia deal with it.

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  9. My heart goes out to the families of those SEALs and the aircrew that went down.

    I, too, am VERY open to carpet bombing. Or cranking up the Enola Gay, for that matter.

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  10. I've long been a proponent of vitrification.

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  11. Proportionate response is politically correct B.S. Kill all these stone-throwing cavemen.

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  12. Linked: http://www.donttreadonus.info/2011/08/top-25-deep-thoughts-edition.html

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  13. Inno, I read this right after you posted it, but did not comment.

    I hate to make rash statements while I'm smarting. We lost two Shreveport boys, SEALs that went to high school together at the "brainiac" Magnet School. They were the best of the best.

    I was so damn made that I wanted to cool off before agreeing with EVERY STINKIN' WORD you wrote.

    Okay, I'm cooled off, and I agree with EVERY WORD you wrote.

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  14. Oooops, I wasn't really so damn made...I was so damn mad.

    Typos R Us.

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  15. I haven't been able to read this post until just now.

    I love the metaphor. And I am also in the Grossly Disproportionate Response camp. As I told Pepper on Saturday, I'm just about ready to bomb most of Afghanistan back into the sixth century and turn the rest of it into glass. After all, who would notice the difference?

    I guess that's another vote for both carpet-bombing and Enola Gay.

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  16. Moogie - Strange. Normally I get an email notification when a comment comes in. Neither of those portagee comments showed up in my inbox so I didn't even know they were there 'til you mentioned it.

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  17. "The price of abetting or even tolerating terrorist activity must also be pain."

    He who is compassionate to the cruel ends up being cruel to the compassionate.

    Your metaphor is perfect. Consider it stolen.

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  18. Operation Rolling Thunder Part II. Send in the B-52s! (and not the Rock Lobster or Love Shack variety, either)

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Family-friendly phrasing heartily encouraged.

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