So, while I was busy yesterday, I kept the browser closed and seem to have missed a news cycle. Apparently there are allegations that a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan failed his sanity check and went off the reservation and shot up a bunch of sleeping Afghanis?
The media seem ghoulishly ecstatic, since the guy lived up to every J-school grad Manhattanite's mental image of your typical member of the armed forces, but it's the reaction of the Taliban that is puzzling me most. They are vowing revenge!
I'm not quite sure how that works out. Are they going to set off suicide bombs and conduct some rocket and mortar attacks? Is that what they're going to do? Because I thought that's what they were doing already.
I guess they could, like, do like a radio DJ and dedicate the next hit or something but, also like the radio DJ, they were going to play a tune anyway, although I suppose it's the thought that counts.
As an aside, calls for the alleged perpetrator's head on a plate (and right now!) demonstrate the underlying utter futility of the attempt to unleash the inner voter's-registration-card-havin', HOA-dues-payin', Best-Buy-shoppin' American that Washington seems to think lurks in the heart of every Afghani hilljack: Ten years we've been bombing democracy into 'em and you might as well try and explain "Due Process of Law" to a tree stump as to your average Pashtun-in-the-street.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
17 comments:
Ever since we targeted bombed Anwar al-Awlaki by executive order, we cannot exactly claim the high ground when it comes to due process, either.
Divemedic,
Who was Admiral Yamamoto's defense attorney?
If the Taliban launch some operation and get this guy, then c'est la guerre, but that's the way it was last week, too.
Hell give him a fair trial, then hand him over for the capital punishment he deserves. Win win...
I understand their confrusion.
After all we seem to be able to kill Afghans p.d.q...
We have the system in place, but the American public is not above screaming for heads. The Casey Anthony fiasco comes to mind.
We need bigger demoracy bombs to keep pace with the evolving threats.
Calling General Dymanics and Lockheed Martin.
Gerry
Prince Ali Seraj, the head of the National Coalition for Dialogue with the Tribes of Afghanistan sez, "They can withstand collateral damage. They can withstand night raids. But murder is something that they totally abhor, and when that happens, they really want justice."
Have to keep reminding myself that these guys have a different definition of murder and justice than we do.
For instance: Killing you don't like for any reason whatsoever = justice. Beheading your wife because she thinks you're a chauvinistic pig = justice. Running your daughter over with your car because you don't like her choice in music or clothes = justice.
Getting killed by someone who watched Anakin's seduction to the Dark Side too many times = murder.
Friend who was over there as a contractor for one of those evil companies told me a lot that I'd never thought of. The illiteracy rate is somewhere north of 80% so whatever the mullah tells them is in the Koran is what is in the Koran. All they're worrying about is where the next meal is coming from, heck with a democratic future. I'd go for getting out of there, if any of them attack us again, use the drones and airplanes to wipe out a bunch of them, immediately, and let them kill each other.
The best solution I've heard rguarding Afganistan is to pull out but first: Destroy everything we've built. Agent orange all of the poppy fields (Biggest export from this hell hole is heroine). Cut off all foreign aid. They'll just go back to killing each other like theyve been doing for the past 1000 years.
I'm about to the point of JimB: Pull out leaving scorched earth behind.
And the next time someone uses them as a sanctuary to attack us, Let Strategic Command handle the retaliation. We've really never had a good live fire test of a Peacekeeper or Trident.
Let them hate so long as they fear indeed.
Aside from deploring his bad taste in allowing himself to be taken alive, I really don't have a problem with all this. How many Afghan soldiers have gone berserk and shot US soldiers? Am I to believe they wouldn't have done the same to American women and children given the chance? Let them choke on the gander-sauce.
Afghanistan, as late as the 60's used to be culturally advanced and literate. Until the you know who arrived.
@JimB: Two words: Arc Light.
Ha Ha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4VHKpGJX29s
This seems to echo one of the points on Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: First you need the institutions (in his case, banks and such) then you get the benefits (capital formation, loans, risk assessment, etc.).
The Afghans need the institutions of fair trial before they can have a trial and verdict that anyone will believe was fair.
For the shooter, I suppose he is nuts, but he might just be Muslim, and looking to give all Americans a bad name. Just speculating, but that would be a truly unique way to hamper the war effort - join up, then commit atrocities.
http://terminallance.com/2012/01/23/terminal-lance-174-breaking-news
wordsmithing
Post a Comment