[Urbane Guerrilla]

The voice of unreason as usual, Marichiko.

WE who, white boy? I sit at The Wall in DC, trace my fingers on certain names etched in stone, never to hear that man's voice again, never to see his smile, and I am to take comfort in the thought that some street vendor in Saigon is selling wrist watches made in China?

I've walked the Wall more than once myself. I've stood in the little pine grove near the Three Bronze Grunts (the nurse statue wasn't up yet) and played "Battle of the Somme" on my pipes. After I was done playing, some of the patch veterans that frequent the Wall came up and told me how much they'd liked it. There was more than one pair of misty eyes there that afternoon.

I bet they'd thank you if you went and did likewise. From a raw-beginner start, it would likely take you about eight to twelve months of practice to get you where you'd be ready to do it. Like any musical instrument, it's less the days of doing it than it is the hours.

How dare you make so light of their sacrifices?

That you'd like me to make light of their sacrifice is just one more reason that that will never happen. And taking your political ideas for action -- dubious, very very dubious. William F. Buckley and L. Brent Bozell (speaking, as we soon will, of "in the family") seem to me far more trustworthy.

AS someone who was involved in military intelligence and covert ops, aren't you the slightest bit puzzled over what the hell we are doing in Iraq?

Not remotely puzzled: I can see what it is we're trying to do. We are trying to make Islamoterrorism extinct by eliminating its natural breeding grounds: Islamic non-democracies. There's nothing in particular wrong with eliminating the weakest non-democracy first, and that was Iraq -- interesting, was it not, to note how few felt like dying for Saddam's régime? And those few, well, they died. Good riddance: a lack of lackeys emasculates tyrants.

We who were in the military intelligence community tend to differentiate strongly our understandings of what routine intelligence gathering and covert operations really are -- considering covert ops to be Special Warfare and the bailiwick of the Special Forces, the SEALs, Delta, and perhaps a few less publicized outfits of get-in-and-whack-'ems. We SIGINT guys -- well, it's good duty, but I'd be the last to call it exciting to watch: it's guys under headphones staring at equipment. Perhaps the nearest civilian equivalent to SIGINT is radio astronomy -- you're using the electromagnetic spectrum to tease out information that isn't necessarily meant for you, and you don't reach out and twiddle with what you're getting the information from. Covert operations? Only in the very broadest sense of covert, and not as used within the community.

. . .if we were going to invade ANY country in retribution for 9/11, would it not be Saudi Arabia?

Or shouldn't we be treating Saudi as an ally? They've been wiping out al-Qaeda sympathizers to the tune of five thousand arrested or dead. And since we've been this active in the region, elections are happening in Saudi too. Who'd've expected that development? Would we have expected it without the Iraq campaign? The people who try to find failure in all this don't strike me as honest, not at all. The House of Saud is walking a tightrope between their biggest markets on one side and the more idiotic sort of al-Wahabis on the other, but on balance they come down on our side because they know they'd be the poorer if they bowed to al-Wahab -- about as big a clench-butt in the Islamic world as the most tightassed fundie televangelists you can think of.

Is not Bin Laden a member of the House of Saud?

He is not. The bin Laden family is Yemeni in origin, and made the family fortune in construction -- in Saudi, where the money was. The bin Laden family don't like Osama very much at all, either. They treat him like a remittance man. This suggests they don't find him anything approaching reasonable themselves. Osama's what happens when you've got religious bigotry combined with tens of millions of dollars.

Good liberals ought to fight against religious bigots, shouldn't they? If they're actually good, I mean?

Its as if after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, we decided to declare war on New Zealand. What the hell? Close enough!

This is the sort of raving that tells us you're wrapped considerably too tight, and that you think this makes your point demonstrates your want of wisdom.

You cannot back up your convictions.

Heh heh. Sez you; and I shall be delighted to prove you mistaken, and at length. Say, for the next forty years, by which time I'll be pushing ninety and may be bored with it.

. . .you tell us Vietnam was a worthy sacrifice of American lives. . .

Of course it was. Fights against tyrannies (and was North Vietnam anything but?) are worthy fights by definition. Check Augustine of Hippo on the topic. What was wrong with Vietnam was the strategy was in effect designed to lose, and the war was lost not in the hills of Vietnam but in the halls of Congress, to our shame. That the Saigon government was not exactly a model of either enlightenment or efficiency in no way invalidates the battle against Hanoi, as a quarter million Vietnamese refugees and boat people will happily and rightly tell you. And what's become of the Communist régime in Vietnam? Its communism has decayed, and will fairly soon be replaced by something more in accord with human nature, bit by quiet bit.

Granted, Saddam was a tyrant, but the fucking world is chock full of tyrants! The US neither can nor should go out to war against all of them.

As a strong believer in the goodness of human freedom, I find the first sentence flatly disproves the second. You see, I want a good world. That means a world with no tyrannies, nor tyranny's excesses. "All of them"? Eh, one at a time will suffice. The tender feelings of tyrants and their lackeys should receive no consideration beyond the mercy of a bullet through the skull, rather than say burning at the stake or just plain impalement, which doesn't consume firewood and if done Wallachian style, takes longer too. Blunted point, greased shaft. Considering where they stick it in, embarrassing too, though death per anum may well suit the irredeemably assholic.

The proper function of the military in a DEMOCRACY is to defend the country's own borders.

This is mistaken too. The proper function of a democracy's military is to defend that democracy's INTERESTS. These do not stop at the borders.

I'm waiting, Mr. Democracy, and why the hell don't you put your body where your mouth is and go fight some Iraqi "insurgents," since you are so god damn gung ho about killing prople? Go kill 'em already, why are you wasting your time here?

Well! The shriller you get, the more the madwoman you sound. You're saying "Mr. Democracy" as if it were a bad thing. I believe I've made it clear at least twice that I am now over military age, and yet have nine years more military service than you do. I've a wife with twenty and a retirement. You do not have any standing to screech about this; I've told you you're a lightweight, and that's why. What I'm doing here is one of two things: either converting you from your current error (I'd go so far as to call it a sin -- one I don't commit.) or leaving you as the sole and the only adherent to it: isolated in your error and your wrongfulness, while all the Cellar points at you and laughs.