War - Etiquette and Rules by Emily Post
If you aren't reading Noble Eagle, you should be.Today he points out the internal threat the American War on Terror faces from...American attorneys:
Many are now arguing that terrorists that have been captured overseas deserve to
be treated like US citizens who have been arrested. How can we fight and win a
war if the people we capture on the battlefield have to be treated like drunk
drivers, drug dealers, and shoplifters?
He makes a really good point. Read it all.
War is ugly and mean and dirty and not to be fought by little girls with pink parasols. Emily Post didn't lay down guidelines for the correct way to engage the enemy. Martha Stewart's annual cookbook is not going to stop terrorism. To suggest that there should be any such thing as a "kinder and gentler" way to wage war is ridiculous.
The very nature of war is what leads to the cessation of hostilities. Death, destruction, and disease make a man very lonely for his wife, children, and home. If war were really a just a good time, a frat party on wheels, they would never stop! If we soften our approach to the enemy, do we not embolden them?
Total war is the ONLY way to wage a successful war. Those who linger over every single body coming home to tears and point to them as justification for such kinder and gentler methodologies assume too much at our peril. For, if we impose such niceties on our own fighting forces, we can have no honest or reasonable or realistic expectation that the enemy will do so in kind. But...some would suggest it were so.
I ask you...if a group of people has already demonstrated the extent of the evil means they are going to go to, such as flying multiple jet airliners into highrises, do we really think they are going to soften the thrust of the jihad simply because we softened the blow of our daisycutters?
I DON'T THINK SO!
Every attempt to soften our approach emboldens the enemy and unfairly burdens our troops. We ask so much of them already. Isn't it reasonable to give them the space to do their jobs? I mean, as large an organization as the US Military is, do we really need 18 more layers of bureacracy at the hands of attorneys?
Now, I don't mean to apologize for war criminals. But, I would point out that men are only men and war is hell. If you put a man in hell, you can't expect him to act like he's at the Queen's annual tea party/birthday.
If a man is standing a post to preserve my liberty, my way of life, my country, and my world, I want him to have the tool of his choice. I don't want to hamper him with hurdles.
The world could do with a few less lawyers.
