I'm not angry, comparing anger to what I feel is like comparing a guttering match to the sun. I'm not enraged, that's entirely too polite a term. I am well and truly pissed off.
We capture terrorists, without uniforms, we fly them to a Caribean island where they get three hot meals a day that meet the requirements of their religion, prayer mats, Korans and when we try to extract information from them by depriving them of sleep we're called torturers. When three of them decide to hang themselves we're held responsible for their deaths.
Then two of our soldiers, in uniform, completely identifiable as American soldiers and perfectly distinguishable from any civilian in the area, are captured. They have their genitals cut off and stuffed in their mouths. They have their eyes gouged out. They have their heads cut off. Their mutilated corpses are intentionally left in a place where they'll be found by other Americans and their bodies are booby trapped as is the area around them in hopes of killing yet more Americans. There's no outrage flowing from this. Two men died a horrible death at the hands of monsters and there's no outrage, while terrorists are photographed with underwear over their heads and we're called brutal.
Yet we have people insisting that we must play by civilized rules in dealing with the terrorists. We have people claiming that the terrorists must be treated according to the Geneva Convention, ignoring the fact that the Geneva Convention allows combatants without command structure, who don't carry arms openly and who wear no identification to show that they are in fact legal combatants to be shot on sight. They ignore the fact that the Geneva Convention is intended to be adhered to by BOTH sides of a conflict, otherwise the agreement is void.
We need to change how we fight the War on Terror. First, we need to get rid of the imbedded reporters. Why? They lead to too many Monday Morning Quarterbacks. When one of our warriors has to make a decision in a matter of seconds, when making the wrong decision could kill him and his comrades, but then that decision is endlessly analysed in slow motion by people in safe, comfortable offices to see if he may have been able to decide otherwise, well as they say that dog just won't hunt. I'm not a veteran, I've never been in combat. I, unlike so many of my self-proclaimed intellectual betters in the news media, won't second-guess anyone for what they do in the heat of combat. The grunt on the ground doesn't have the advantage of all the information that will later be gathered after the smoke clears, he doesn't have access to video tapes and satelite images to tell him exactly what's happening around him and, even if he had access to all this information, he wouldn't have time to sit down and analyze it to make a completely informed decision before he and his buddies are killed. He has to make a decision now, not tomorrow, not in ten minutes, but right this very second. In combat the best thing you can do is the right thing, the second-best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the absolute worst thing you can do it nothing.
Second, we have to put the blame for civilian deaths exactly where it belongs. Few German civilians were killed by American troops on the ground during World War II. Why? Because when the German army occupied a town to set up a defensive position the civilians moved out, and because the German military wore uniforms so that the Allies could tell at a glance if a person running across the street was a soldier (and thereby a target) or a civilian (and therefore not a target). The Germans didn't fire from civilian occupied buildings while dressed as civilians themselves so that when the Allied troops entered the building they couldn't tell who fired on them. If the terrorists don't want their civilians killed they have to stop making themselves look like civilians while attacking American troops. They have to clear the civilians out of an area before setting up shop. We, for our part, need to support those warriors who make these difficult decisions, stop insisting that they do the impossible and spare civilians while killing the indistinguishable terrorists, and stop blaming our troops when it turns out that someone they killed wasn't a terrorist.
Lastly, we have to stop insisting that our troops fight a civilized war when their enemies are anything but civilized. This war isn't a football game where both sides fight according to previously agreed upon rules and where some impartial third party determines when a foul has occurred and what the penalty shall be. From the very start the terrorists have failed to fight according to any recognized standard, targetting civilians, murdering prisoners, and disguising combatants as non-combatants. Spare me the argument that acting in a similar manner will "bring us down to their level". We are at war, war is organized barbarism, and the nation that's more efficiently barbaric will not only win, it will bring a speedier end to the war. Kim Du Toit gave the best analogy I've seen yet, we can't insist that our boxer go into the ring and fight under the Queensbury rules and watch helplessly as his opponent enters the ring armed with a flamethrower.
Yes, I know, it took me over a week to write this. Part of me was processing the events and trying to make something coherent out of a white-hot cloud of pure emotion. Another part was hoping that the media would respond with some outrage, but instead (and predictably) they responded with stories about Abu Gharib and Gitmo. They responded by saying that our men and women in uniform are no better than the animals who castrated, mutilated, and decapidated two of our citizen soldiers. They drew a moral equivalence between those who broke the rules, in a rather mild way really, and were punished for their transgressions, and those who committed attrocities and who are hailed as heroes. The only outrage I've found has been by my fellow amatuer journalists in the blogosphere and by the common folks I've spoken to. So much for the relevancy of the mainstream media.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Reflections on my 43rd Lap Around the Sun
Today, June 15th 2006, marks the 43rd anniversary of the day Dr Shernlank (I am not making that name up) caught me as my mother pushed me screaming into this world. A lot has happened to the world in 43 years.
If you're about my age, you probably know how to do long division, but you'd rather use a calculator. You may know how to use a sliderule, but you still prefer a calculator.
You remember stacking records on a spindle on a turntable, where they'd drop down to play. You had to turn them over to play the other side. 45's had a big hole in the middle you had to fill with this little plastic thingy.
My mother made iced tea with tea bags in a big pot, she'd pour it into empty instant coffee jars and put it in the fridge.
Speaking of instant coffee, this stuff is the reason I hated coffee until I discovered that some people actually brewed coffee.
Boys played with toy guns. This wasn't cause for concern by parents, teachers or school administrators. Girls played with dolls. Boys and girls seldom played together unless the girl was a tomboy, then she was just another boy. Boys thought girls were yucky, girls thought boys were yucky, the boys would outgrow this but the girls wouldn't.
You were expected to get dirty when you played, especially if the play involved Tonka trucks in the yard.
The cure for hyperactivity was to go outside and play.
Pong was the extent of home video games. You could go to the Arcade at the Mall to play video games for a quarter a play.
TV had seven working channels, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Channel 7 had the 4:30 movie every day.
There were no video rental stores because there were no video tapes or DVD's, if you wanted to see a movie you went to the movies or you waited for it to come on TV.
Wrestling was on channel 42 or 47 UHF, the announcers only spoke Spanish.
The grammer school principal had a paddle. If you misbehaved you went up on the stage during Assembly, assumed the position, and got your butt whacked in front of everyone. The pain was bad, the humiliation was worse, and the thought of what your parents would do to you when you got home was worst of all.
Teachers didn't care about your self esteem, if you didn't learn the material you got a failing grade. If you got too many failing grades you got left back.
There were no mini-vans, there were a few SUVs that were basically short pick-up trucks with seats in back. Families had station wagons. There were no car seats, and nobody wore seatbelts.
The first computer hard-drive I ever saw advertized was in a Radio Shack catalog, it held 8.4 MB (not GB) and cost $4,995. It was about the size of the CPU case on my current computer. Dell currently lists a 1,000 GB (or one terabyte if you prefer) drive for $1,000.
Most cars didn't have air conditioning, power windows or power locks. You couldn't unlock the car from a distance, you had to use the key, but few people bothered to lock the car anyway. Lots of people just left the keys in the ignition. Nobody had car alarms.
Most bikes had one speed, some had three, some had five, and the most any bike had was ten. Nobody wore a helmet to ride a bike. These same people often didn't hold the handlebars while they rode. Bikes came in boys and girls types.
The Star Trek communicator was a futuristic piece of equipment, not something everyone had on their belt or in their pocket or purse.
We landed on the moon. We were going to Mars. In 2001 we'd be going to Jupiter (Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick said so!).
The Russians wanted to nuke us, but didn't dare because they knew we'd nuke them back. Mutually Assured Destruction kept everyone safe.
In High School we discected once-living frogs, grasshoppers and earthworms. Some classes did clams too, those students vowed never to eat another clam. There were periodic small explosions in the Chemistry lab, and there were often noxious smells coming from there.
On Sunday mornings we read the funnies. Mom made dinner early on Sunday, then there was usually a movie on TV in the afternoon.
There were no CDs, DVDs, VCRs or home computers. People bought TVs and stereos, not home entertainment systems. We read books made of paper.
Yes, a lot has changed. The world is better in some ways, worse in others, different in many. We've come further than we'd ever dreamed and failed to accomplish many of the things we expected.
If you're about my age, you probably know how to do long division, but you'd rather use a calculator. You may know how to use a sliderule, but you still prefer a calculator.
You remember stacking records on a spindle on a turntable, where they'd drop down to play. You had to turn them over to play the other side. 45's had a big hole in the middle you had to fill with this little plastic thingy.
My mother made iced tea with tea bags in a big pot, she'd pour it into empty instant coffee jars and put it in the fridge.
Speaking of instant coffee, this stuff is the reason I hated coffee until I discovered that some people actually brewed coffee.
Boys played with toy guns. This wasn't cause for concern by parents, teachers or school administrators. Girls played with dolls. Boys and girls seldom played together unless the girl was a tomboy, then she was just another boy. Boys thought girls were yucky, girls thought boys were yucky, the boys would outgrow this but the girls wouldn't.
You were expected to get dirty when you played, especially if the play involved Tonka trucks in the yard.
The cure for hyperactivity was to go outside and play.
Pong was the extent of home video games. You could go to the Arcade at the Mall to play video games for a quarter a play.
TV had seven working channels, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13. Channel 7 had the 4:30 movie every day.
There were no video rental stores because there were no video tapes or DVD's, if you wanted to see a movie you went to the movies or you waited for it to come on TV.
Wrestling was on channel 42 or 47 UHF, the announcers only spoke Spanish.
The grammer school principal had a paddle. If you misbehaved you went up on the stage during Assembly, assumed the position, and got your butt whacked in front of everyone. The pain was bad, the humiliation was worse, and the thought of what your parents would do to you when you got home was worst of all.
Teachers didn't care about your self esteem, if you didn't learn the material you got a failing grade. If you got too many failing grades you got left back.
There were no mini-vans, there were a few SUVs that were basically short pick-up trucks with seats in back. Families had station wagons. There were no car seats, and nobody wore seatbelts.
The first computer hard-drive I ever saw advertized was in a Radio Shack catalog, it held 8.4 MB (not GB) and cost $4,995. It was about the size of the CPU case on my current computer. Dell currently lists a 1,000 GB (or one terabyte if you prefer) drive for $1,000.
Most cars didn't have air conditioning, power windows or power locks. You couldn't unlock the car from a distance, you had to use the key, but few people bothered to lock the car anyway. Lots of people just left the keys in the ignition. Nobody had car alarms.
Most bikes had one speed, some had three, some had five, and the most any bike had was ten. Nobody wore a helmet to ride a bike. These same people often didn't hold the handlebars while they rode. Bikes came in boys and girls types.
The Star Trek communicator was a futuristic piece of equipment, not something everyone had on their belt or in their pocket or purse.
We landed on the moon. We were going to Mars. In 2001 we'd be going to Jupiter (Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick said so!).
The Russians wanted to nuke us, but didn't dare because they knew we'd nuke them back. Mutually Assured Destruction kept everyone safe.
In High School we discected once-living frogs, grasshoppers and earthworms. Some classes did clams too, those students vowed never to eat another clam. There were periodic small explosions in the Chemistry lab, and there were often noxious smells coming from there.
On Sunday mornings we read the funnies. Mom made dinner early on Sunday, then there was usually a movie on TV in the afternoon.
There were no CDs, DVDs, VCRs or home computers. People bought TVs and stereos, not home entertainment systems. We read books made of paper.
Yes, a lot has changed. The world is better in some ways, worse in others, different in many. We've come further than we'd ever dreamed and failed to accomplish many of the things we expected.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
A Good Terrorist
The other morning the radio awoke me at the usual un-Godly hour with the news that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by an American air-strike. This was certainly good news to start the day, any time a terrorist gets sent to someplace considerably hotter than Iraq is cause for celebration. The news hit after the press-time of the free (and worth every penny!) morning paper I get in the morning, so I had to wait until the next morning to read about it.
News is a funny thing. Actual news, meaning the who, what, when and how of an event, has a shelf-life of about twenty-four hours. This means that if news breaks in the morning by the time a morning newspaper runs it it's already getting stale. Newspapers don't stop running news stories just because the news is stale though, oh no. Doing so would lead people to believe that the newspaper exists to inform its readers rather than to expose them to advertizing (I go into much greater detail on this in one of my very early entries entitled The Media).
So what's a newspaper editor to do? Everybody knows that al-Zarqawi found himself fatally near 1,000 pounds of smart-bombs when they detonated, that's not news anymore. What we now get is commentary, and todays throwaway is running with the story that al-Z's death doesn't mean anything, that the insurgency will continue, and that the father of Nick Berg (who was decapitated by al-Zarqawi) is sad that another person had to die and blames George Bush for his son's death.
Of course when all else fails, you can always do man-in-the-street interviews to see if people think the insurgency will end now. One of the randomly-selected experts on insurgency said that if he were a terrorist the death of his leader would inspire him to fight harder. I have some news for him, it doesn't matter how hard a terrorist fights, to be successful he has to fight smart. Any idiot with a room-temperature IQ can wrap himself in exposives and blow himself up, but getting the explosives, recruiting, planning, and deciding where to send him as part of a co-ordinated attack requires a smart and talented leader. By all accounts al-Zarqawi was such a leader.
We'll see. Maybe someone will step in and fill al-Zarqawi's shoes. Maybe the insurgency will crumble without his leadership. I don't know and any prediction I may make would be strictly a guess, just like the predictions I read in the newspaper.
Predictions are funny things, if you happen to be right everyone thinks you're a genius. If you're wrong everybody will forget that you made the prediction. I predicted twenty years ago that music CDs wouldn't take hold, that they'd be replaced any day now by Digital Audio Tape and that anyone who had a CD player would end up with the equivalent of an eight-track player. Had I been right people who heard me say it would be marvelling today at my insight. As it is I'll bet no one remembers.
So will the insurgency continue? I don't know, it might, it might not. I do know that if al-Zaqwari were still alive it most assuredly WOULD continue. I know we have enough bombs to take out his successor if there is one.
Let me head off the comments about Osama Bin Laden right now. Yes, I'll read his obituary with great satisfaction too, but in terms of the War on Terror he's a non-issue. He's in hiding someplace (assuming he's not already dead), he's not running anything. He hasn't even released a video tape in years, just a couple audio tapes. We'll catch up to him someday, but al-Zaqwari was actually leading terrorists in attacks against Americans, getting him was a priority.
News is a funny thing. Actual news, meaning the who, what, when and how of an event, has a shelf-life of about twenty-four hours. This means that if news breaks in the morning by the time a morning newspaper runs it it's already getting stale. Newspapers don't stop running news stories just because the news is stale though, oh no. Doing so would lead people to believe that the newspaper exists to inform its readers rather than to expose them to advertizing (I go into much greater detail on this in one of my very early entries entitled The Media).
So what's a newspaper editor to do? Everybody knows that al-Zarqawi found himself fatally near 1,000 pounds of smart-bombs when they detonated, that's not news anymore. What we now get is commentary, and todays throwaway is running with the story that al-Z's death doesn't mean anything, that the insurgency will continue, and that the father of Nick Berg (who was decapitated by al-Zarqawi) is sad that another person had to die and blames George Bush for his son's death.
Of course when all else fails, you can always do man-in-the-street interviews to see if people think the insurgency will end now. One of the randomly-selected experts on insurgency said that if he were a terrorist the death of his leader would inspire him to fight harder. I have some news for him, it doesn't matter how hard a terrorist fights, to be successful he has to fight smart. Any idiot with a room-temperature IQ can wrap himself in exposives and blow himself up, but getting the explosives, recruiting, planning, and deciding where to send him as part of a co-ordinated attack requires a smart and talented leader. By all accounts al-Zarqawi was such a leader.
We'll see. Maybe someone will step in and fill al-Zarqawi's shoes. Maybe the insurgency will crumble without his leadership. I don't know and any prediction I may make would be strictly a guess, just like the predictions I read in the newspaper.
Predictions are funny things, if you happen to be right everyone thinks you're a genius. If you're wrong everybody will forget that you made the prediction. I predicted twenty years ago that music CDs wouldn't take hold, that they'd be replaced any day now by Digital Audio Tape and that anyone who had a CD player would end up with the equivalent of an eight-track player. Had I been right people who heard me say it would be marvelling today at my insight. As it is I'll bet no one remembers.
So will the insurgency continue? I don't know, it might, it might not. I do know that if al-Zaqwari were still alive it most assuredly WOULD continue. I know we have enough bombs to take out his successor if there is one.
Let me head off the comments about Osama Bin Laden right now. Yes, I'll read his obituary with great satisfaction too, but in terms of the War on Terror he's a non-issue. He's in hiding someplace (assuming he's not already dead), he's not running anything. He hasn't even released a video tape in years, just a couple audio tapes. We'll catch up to him someday, but al-Zaqwari was actually leading terrorists in attacks against Americans, getting him was a priority.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Not a Word
This morning the radio had repeated "news" stories about the fact that today is 6/6/06 and wondering if today would mark the arrival of the Anti-Christ and the beginning of the end of the world. The fact that a movie opens today on this topic is completely coincidental I'm sure. The throwaway newspaper had similar articles, and neither had anything about the more significant meaning of this date. In fact no one but a couple bloggers even noted the date.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Folks, today is June 6. Does that date ring a bell? If not, let's try a little harder. June 6, 1944. Omaha. Utah. Sword. Night of Nights. Normandy.
If you don't get it turn on your TV and DVD right now and watch Band of Brothers in its entirety, from start to finish, including the bonus material, without a bathroom break. No fair fast-forwarding either. When that's done watch Saving Private Ryan.
Sixty-two years ago marked the beginning of the end, not of the world, but of World War II. Once the Allies had a foothold in France the war was lost by Germany, it was only a matter of time.
I've said it before on these pages, the Greatest Generation is dying off rapidly, the men who served in World War II are now in their eighties. If you know any talk to them, get their stories now before it's too late. And thank them.
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Folks, today is June 6. Does that date ring a bell? If not, let's try a little harder. June 6, 1944. Omaha. Utah. Sword. Night of Nights. Normandy.
If you don't get it turn on your TV and DVD right now and watch Band of Brothers in its entirety, from start to finish, including the bonus material, without a bathroom break. No fair fast-forwarding either. When that's done watch Saving Private Ryan.
Sixty-two years ago marked the beginning of the end, not of the world, but of World War II. Once the Allies had a foothold in France the war was lost by Germany, it was only a matter of time.
I've said it before on these pages, the Greatest Generation is dying off rapidly, the men who served in World War II are now in their eighties. If you know any talk to them, get their stories now before it's too late. And thank them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)