I've refrained from commentary on the loss of four private military contractors due to the fact that I've been trying to figure out what to say.
My initial reaction was just like everyone else, i.e. call the Stratofortresses from Diego Garcia, load 'em up with the Mark 82 500 pound bomb and send a three-ship cell in broad daylight to retaliate. That, or implement the Darth Sidious solution, which is summed up as, "Wipe them out. All of them."
This is, of course, a purely visceral and most unproductive response. I would also hate to have to explain support for such an action to a fellow named Jesus Christ, so that's the ultimate double whammy. It would also smack heavily of the German National Socialist response to the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by British-backed Czech irregulars.1 Hitler, enraged at this affront by the Czechs (the very nerve, killing the man sent to oversee their liquidation!) ordered the annihilation of the town of Lidice, right down to having it taken off of maps. If memory serves, their "crime" was being less than enthusiastic about the presence of the unsmiling men with the skull-and-crossbones on their hats and a hankering for violence.
I would prefer for the name of American forces to not be associated with Fallujah as was the German politico-military establishment with Lidice.
At the same time, the individuals who did this must die. Insofar as we can identify the guilty parties, they should be captured, marched out into a public place, and shot. An abject lesson must be taught: To kill Americans is to invite an unyielding and excruciatingly accurate retaliation, especially if you're stupid enough to talk to Sky News or whoever it was that taped this.
I would like to point out to the Iraqi man that claimed Fallujah was an American graveyard that perhaps his syntax is garbled and that his luck was with him. Much more of these kinds of actions, and the Americans may turn Fallujah into a graveyard, if not a giant glassy crater.
The important objective will be to carry out the lesson from two paragraphs up without killing non-combatants or Fallujahns who're willing to participate in the peaceful and pro-Western new Iraq. Hopefully, our people will retaliate at the time and the place of our choosing.
1 SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich had been set up as the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia (former Czechoslovakia, if I have my geography right) and was generally a man who deserved a far more brutal death than he received. He was Adolf Eichmann's boss, and participated at the Wannsee Conference, where it was decided that the Jews of Europe would be exterminated.
Posted by Country Pundit at April 2, 2004 11:45 PM