The Only Good Terrorist...

Michael Kinsley, columnist and talking head, has written a piece so idiotic one must assume that his DRD4 gene has, like the DNA of the teleported fly did with Seth Brundle, completely corrupted and incapacitated his rationality.  Mikey is appalled--appalled, do you hear--that the US is launching drones against terrorists.  Perhaps you may find reason in his rant.  I readily confess it is well beyond my mortal ken.

Mikey begins by instructing us on military history.  "[M]ore civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers," he quotes one historian.  "That was not true of World War I or most earlier conflicts."

No doubt that WWII was especially hard on civilians, particularly those in Germany and Jpapn, and especially when you add in the six or so million Jews killed in the Holocaust.  Some have argued that the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in the nuking of Japan saved the millions of lives that would have been lost to starvation, had we simply blockaded the country.  Understand--we did not nuke Japan to save Japanese lives; we nuked Japan to end the war before those pesky Ruskies could overrun all of Korea.  But that's another story.  In the end, the civilians in both countries were enablers of their governments' war-mongering aggression, either by fully buying into their madness or simply acquiescing to it.  The resulting devastation was the price they paid; no tears of sympathy from me.

Earlier wars, like earlier football contests, were ground games which "used to be conducted on battlefields, between soldiers in uniforms lined up in rows, bayonets at the ready.  People famously took picnic baskets to watch the first battle of Manassas...," an event, one supposes, that may have marked the country's first tailgate party.  Air power, with its indiscriminate saturation or carpet bombing, brought war directly and massively to the general population.  The introduction and proliferation of nuclear weapons gave the world deterence.

Today, Mikey laments, vastly improved capability has restored impetus.  He points out that drones "can aim at and hit a target with enormous precision."  While most would perceive this as a good thing, because "no American lives are put at risk, and the precision minimizes collateral damage...," Mikey argues that it is actually bad, because when you have the ability to strike at an enemy with zero risk to your own people, you are more likely to do so.

A valid point, no doubt.  But let's project Mikey's logic to its unstated but inevitable conclusion.  What really has his pinkish tutu riding up in his nether orifice is that it just isn't fair that we, who have drone technology, can whack some terriorst towel-head at will and not suffer consequences.  Never mind that our enemy is not above hijacking our airliners and driving them into buildings.  Never mind that they welcome their own deaths as martyrdom.

Moreover, he argues, drones "highlight a terrible anomaly of civil libertarian societies: the contrast between how we treat killing--state sponsored killing--in battle, and how we treat killing in civilian life.  There are no Miranda warnings in the trenches," he philosophizes.

Concepts such as the Miranda right don't compute with terrorists.  They can't even spell "Miranda," Mikey, let alone understand what it is.

Here's the thing.  We cannot apply societal norms to those who live outside society.  Terrorists do not differentiate between soldiers and civilians; we are all infidels and must therefore die.  We will never defeat them at their game by adhering to self-imposed, unilateral rules.  "Civilized war" is oxymoronic on its face.  Civilized war against the uncivilized is simply moronic.

But you would have us play nice with these wild-eyed violators of hemorrhoidal goats, wouldn't you, Mikey?  You want us to put ourselves in the line of fire so that the terrorists we target will have an equal chance of taking us out.

Now really.  Isn't that taking your egalitarianism nonsense just a little too far?