Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Fallujah
So, Fallujah. As I write this, the marines are engaged in a hard, street by street action against insurgents. As hard and bloody as it will be, its the right call, and I wish them success as quickly as possible.
It was hard seeing the partisanship leading up to the action. On our local conservative radio, both callers and hosts were urging the idea that Fallujah should be taken off the map, permanently. Displace the population, and raze the town. I thought that was absolutely the wrong call. When one caller likened the upcoming action as "trying to kill a rat with a hammer", he cautioned to "make sure you hit the rat". The host then said "We'll try."
No, there is no try. You hit the rat, period. To do anything else is wrong. It is, as another host called it "fighting terror with terror". If you try to kill a rat with a hammer, and you hit a child instead, its a crime. And although we might not be prosecuted in a court for it, we'll be pilloried in the court of world opinion, again. If you are going to make a decisive strike, it HAS to be precise.
On the other side, Dan Rather made the rather laborious claim that the four civilians killed In Fallujah were there because of "an Economy which precuded them from finding work anywhere else." This statement in not only injurious in blaming the administration's economic policy for the death, it is facetious in that the four people killed and former military specialists who know work in a private security firm that acts as a private army for corporations. How much work did Mr. Rather think four highly trained mercenaries would find in Kansas? Or New York? The fact is, however tragic their deaths are, the men were acting as part of a paramilitary unit, which intentionally places themeslves in danger for high pay. It had nothing to do with the economy, it had to do with their career choice.
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