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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2006-12-29

The Importance of Extermination

or,

No Point In Me Saying It . . .

if somebody with unimpeachable credibility has said it better.

From Froggy:

In my segment on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show yesterday, I focused on the frustrations that I hear from milblogs to MSM reports to reports from my own sources that the ROEs have devolved to the point of absurdity and our forces are more fearful of UCMJ violations than they are of enemy insurgents. This devolution of the ROEs in Iraq originated from an institutional CYA instinct by the DOD and senior commanders resulting from sensationalist media coverage of such events as Abu Ghraib, CIA "secret prisons", and various manufactured Gitmo abuse claims.

The Ethiopian Army has imposed no such constraints on itself and is doing to islamist forces in Somalia in days what the UN, and the US weren’t able to achieve in years. Reports from the front indicate that the Islamic Courts who had been administering sharia law in Mogadishu have surrendered and fled the city in advance of the Ethiopian assault. Obviously, the Ethiopian Army’s combat power, training, and capabilities are a mere fraction of ours and yet they are decisively defeating a fanatical and entrenched enemy in an urban environment. Why?

Off the top of my head, I would say that Ethiopia is not afflicted with a pernicious and defeatist media machine that is capable of manipulating public opinion, and even if it was, it doesn’t look like the Ethiopian president would give a damn in any case. The word that comes to mind is resolve. . .

Sadly, I doubt that this sort of message has any chance of getting through to the people who need to hear it.

Let me put this in other terms.

I've recently had problems with my house. Plumbing problems, to be exact. (That, in large part, explains the recent drop in blogging activity). But the problem with plumbing problems is that, often, they're only discovered after a "symptom" presents itself.

In my case, that "symptom" is bugs. Flying, irritating, annoying bugs. Which, even though the plumbing problem has been fixed, persist in my basement and my house.

AAAARRRRGHGHGHGH!!!

I try to kill them in droves, with bug spray and bug bombs and other things; I try to kill them by eliminating their breeding ground via chemicals and other stuff; and, when those measures fail them, I squish them under my fingers one at a time.

But nothing works.

You know what I wish? I wish these bugs were like ants. Ants live in little colonies sustained by and in support of the queen. If there was a queen, I could kill her and, over the course of time, eliminate the colony.

Which makes me wonder why the US government is willing to tolerate all the bugs in their house.

Except that our problem isn't a queen--its a king. Many of them.

If the problem is one or two bugs, kill them in easy ways; if the problem is hundreds--thousands-- of insurgents and terrorists, kill the colony. Eliminate the head of the colony, and those who spread the disease.

It's time to eliminate Moqtada al-Sadr. And, while we're at it, we should eliminate their breeding grounds in Iran. And, just to be sure the message is clear, wipe out any and all chance of the problem getting worse--obliterate the nuclear sites.

But, sadly, that would take resolve.
Posted by: Michael / 12/29/2006 01:07:00 AM

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