Killing Them Softly

I was doing a little business today, and while talking to the owner of the store, the conversation drifted to politics. She said, "I'm really sick of the way things are going over in the Middle East."

I thought, "Oh boy, here we go," expecting to hear how we are failing in Iraq.

Instead she said, "I can't believe we're tying Israel's hands. I think we should just go in, nuke 'em, and start over."

Now you don't expect to hear this kind of bloodthirstiness from a Hoosier grandmother, but she was calm and looked me straight in the eye when she said it, which lead me to believe that it wasn't the first time she had expressed this opinion. I was more politically correct when I said,
"I rather hate the idea of killing women and children..."

She answered, "That's why we need to do it, because they kill children."

This women was straight out of the 1940's. She had no time for nuance. She reasoned in black and white - good and evil. To her, our enemy is easily understood as evil because they kill children. She sees no way to reason with people like that. How do you handle an evil that would go into a Russian school and kill children? How do you handle a society that produces and celebrates a suicide bomber who boards a crowded bus and kills children? This woman would strike with everything she had so that in the future no despot anywhere would dare to harm a little one.

But children die in Russia and we just shake our heads. Israeli children die and it doesn't really surprise us anymore. But what happens when terrorists shoot children at Lincoln Middle School? When a suicide bomber enters Washington Grade School, and little 7-year-old Nicole who sang for church last Sunday has to be identified by dental records... What will we be willing to do then?

We face an enemy of millions. They treat their women and children like chattel. They treat those outside their religious circle as infidels who must convert or die. They reside inside countries and cultures surrounded by like-minded people who support them (or perhaps fear them). They will hate us no matter what we do and will seek to kill us as long as they live. Sadly, some of them are twelve years old and their homicidal path is set in stone.

For a number of reasons we are functioning as a country in denial. One third of us favor adopting the French response - backing up and appeasing until our freedom is gone. One third of us back a floundering politically correct war, hoping to kill our enemy and keep the world liking us. And a third of us are paying no attention whatsoever.

There is a grandmother I know who is ready to take care of business once and for all.

Right now we are being played for the fools we are - A paper tiger - A superpower that is more concerned with its image and "fighting fair" than securing its safety from two bit theocricies and tinhorn dictators. What a pathetic sight.

I don't want us to use nukes. But why does modern morality insist on a fair fight?