esrosedotblog

Most people I hang out with do not want to think about military matters.

They like to talk in sort of hippy-dippy terms, the flower stem put into a gun barrel.

I do not have that mental luxury. Something in me has me wanting to know what is going on. Something else in me wants to fix it.

Maybe it is my Dad still in there tuning to Lowell Thomas on ABC every night. WJZ New York.

Maybe my brief and absolutely benign tour of duty with the US Army Reserves. ROTC, six weeks summer camp, six months active duty as an Officers' Club manager in Fort Lee Virginia. Six more years of successfully avoiding any duty but the annual summer camp spent by the pool at Fort Lee with one of my first closeted boy friends from Philadelphia.

Guilt that others got sent to Germany during one of the Berlin crises? I don't know.

In any case, I do not warm up to pacifists. Or anti-military talk.

Let's not go there. I have probably pissed off half of whatever small audience I have.

Sorry/not sorry.

I remember that my Dad was a hellfire supporter of "bombing the little bastards" out of existence.

I am not that strong. But I am there with him in spirit.

I don't talk out loud about it. Not even at home. It is not a subject that leads to calm discourse. I don't talk religion either. Much.

So, to make an exception, I am interested in the idea of satellite warfare because it keeps people like me clean.

At a distance.

I am not alone.

To Keep America Safe, Embrace Drone Warfare

An Op-Ed today in the New York Times by Michael V. Hayden, a retired Air Force four-star general, who was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009.

One of the most argued issues here is the possibility that a drone will kill innocent people.

I assume that you, dear reader, know that there are no innocent people in a war time situation. We do our best with this but the fact is that in this day and age the soldiers do not rank up and march into fire in a column and drop until there are no more or until the enemy runs out of bullets.

Ever since WWII, there has been unconventional warfare and the means to do the same when it comes at us.

Some of the best war fiction is based on the behind the scenes killer, the sniper, the assassin.

Come on. You like to read that shit too. Don't say otherwise. And if you truly do not then quit reading this because you will be getting pissed at me and I do not want that.

I figure that drone warfare is as "clean" a way to conduct today's wars as there is.

By this I mean to target the enemy and kill him. The basic mission all of us service weenies learned in the first days of military training. To find the enemy and kill him.

Not capture, not harangue and propagandize, not anything else but to find the enemy and kill him.

Drones are very good at that.

But they are not perfect. Every so often a civilian walks into the situation and gets hit along with the insurgents or whatever they call themselves.

This is tragic.

But it is also tragic that some outfit like ISIS goes on a binge of rape and pillage. Brutal torture unchecked.

We live in a world in which evil is at play. Those of us who consider ourselves good owe no less than to root out the "evil-doers" and finish them off.

Yeh. George W. used that term. But you have to believe it to do the necessary job.

Some would say that it is not our job. Well, fuck. Whose is it?

No answer to that one.

Live and let live?

Tell the Taliban that. The little kids and women, if you will, that get tortured for the fun of it.

Oh. You think that is propaganda. That these motherfuckers are not truly motherfuckers? Dream on.

No. Cancel that.

Wake up.

Enjoy the freedom you have to think like you do but at least let others defend it for you and above all get out of the way.

An old joke. Not a joke.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

So yes. This is/was a rant.

I hope it did not hit any "innocent bystanders" but by now you know that I do not think there are any "innocent bystanders in the United States of America. We are all the little kid in Pakistan or wherever. And so on. And here we go again so I will stop.

Make love not war. I wish.

Labels: war and peace