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The Sword Is Mightier Than The Pen
Townhall ^ | January 12, 2015 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 01/12/2015 2:01:20 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

The world is being rocked by a rash of “workplace violence,” though what the Administration believes the Koran has against workplaces remains unclear. Those who eschew the willful blindness of the cowardly and foolish see clearly that the Islamofascist freaks are running up the body count across the globe. The question is what, if anything, are we going to do about it?

Vigils are nice. People get together, hold candles, talk about solidarity and hug, and thereby reinforce the view that Western civilization has lost the intestinal fortitude that kept the jihadi hordes from overrunning Europe during the Middle Ages and that has kept a lid on these fanatics ever since. It’s nice to pick up a pen – as we will see, writing, persuasion and mockery are all vital supporting efforts in the counter-offensive in what Senator Lindsey Graham accurately told Hugh Hewitt is “a religious war.” But it’s necessary to pick up a rifle.

No, it’s not a religious war on our part, but it’s a flat out lie to say it’s not a religious war on theirs. And it is a war to the death. Given my druthers, all-in-all, I’d prefer that the jihadis do the dying.

The pen is not mightier than the sword, or more aptly, the M4 carbine, the 2000-pound JDAM bomb or the Hellfire missile. The way to win a war is to kill the enemy until he surrenders. That’s it. The Romans’ rules of engagement were simple: “Wipe them out.” Two thousand years later, Carthage still isn’t a threat, while a couple years after terrorists massacred four Americans, Benghazi still is.

All those people talking about “limited deployments” and “red lines” and “proportional use of force” – how’s their track record been so far? Iraq went from lost to won to lost again. They simply announced that we had won in Afghanistan, which was a big surprise to the Taliban. And today, you can’t even draw a cartoon in a major Western metropolis without worrying about some degenerate blowing your head off – to be followed by a gang of primarily leftist cultural kapos asking, “What do you expect would happen for saying things that offend people?”

The solution is victory. The West needs to choose to defeat them, not just put off the day when these sociopaths hoist their scuzzy little banners over our capitals. That means fighting, and fighting to win – not just fighting to ensure that the collapse of the next country happens on the next politician’s watch.

War is about killing, and we are not doing enough of it. This is not rocket science. You look at a map of Iraq and ISIS’s zone of influence and you see right where to put the infantry/armor divisions to close them off and wipe them out once and for all. But the West won’t do it. We want to pretend that a few sorties a day to pick off random gun trucks is a substitute for an overwhelming, ruthless attack to take ground and wipe out anyone we find on it who isn’t a friend or surrendering.

Nicking them at the margins is not enough, and our gutless, feckless unwillingness to take the fight to the enemy with our heavy firepower is no secret. They see our weakness. That just makes them stronger.

Hell, if we can’t man up and put our own boots back on the ground, there is a partial solution. As with most questions, our Constitution provides an answer. Maybe we should look to Article I, Section 8, and grant some letters of marque and reprisal. In the olden days, these fabulous documents allowed private ships the right to sail the high seas attacking their nation’s enemies. Maybe we should put a bounty on these ISIS creeps and let private enterprise go to town. Considering it takes a million bucks or more a year to keep a single U.S. soldier in the field over there, even at $100,000 a head – attached or otherwise – taxpayers would be getting a great deal.

Outraged? Offended? So now you’re smarter than James Madison?

Regardless of how we do it, killing vast numbers of jihadis and destroying everything around them is imperative. It not only decreases the raw numbers of fighters, but it dramatically decreases the number of people who want to help them, as doing so will rapidly become associated with getting killed.

The sword is the main effort, but it is not the only effort. The pen – the ideological offensive – is a key supporting effort that complements, but can never replace, the central role of massive, controlled violence.

There is our pen, an intellectual effort by the West to attack Islamofascism head-on. We need to stand up for our culture, not apologize for it. We need to mock the foolishness of jihadism and the delusions of its drooling, sexually inadequate adherents. We need to call it what it is – a savage, primitive, stupid perversion of Islam.

That leads to the second part of the pen/influencing effort, that of the Islamic world. While it is a lie to say that the terrorists have nothing to do with Islam, it is also untrue to say that all Islam supports the terrorists. All Muslims don’t believe in this jihadi idiocy. In fact, right now – as they have for years – decent, brave Muslims are fighting side by side with our troops against jihadi morons. To ignore that is not only a shameful betrayal of our allies but a foolish squandering of a valuable weapon against extremism.

And good Muslims are fighting back. We waited for years for reasonable, rational Muslim voices to make themselves heard, and it has happened. Egypt’s President al-Sisi – you know, the guy who screwed up President Obama’s plan to turn the most important country in the Middle East over to the Muslim Brotherhood – went in front of Islam’s most noted scholars and chewed them out. He called for a rethink and reexamination of Islam, pointing out that jihadi foolishness was turning the Muslim world into a pariah. That’s huge, but few know about it because of both the focus on the murders in Paris and the general cluelessness of our media.

So the pen remains a vital component of victory. But let’s not fool ourselves. We aren’t going to talk the jihadi punks who claim to love death out of their delusions. We need to treat them like Old Yeller – except when they get put out of our misery, no one’s going to cry.

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Foreign Affairs; Government; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: islam; jihad; military; muslims; paris; violence
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1 posted on 01/12/2015 2:01:21 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
'Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets..'

-- Napoleon.

2 posted on 01/12/2015 2:05:16 AM PST by 9thLife ("Life is a military endeavor..." -- Pope Francis)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
No, it’s not a religious war on our part, but it’s a flat out lie to say it’s not a religious war on theirs. And it is a war to the death. Given my druthers, all-in-all, I’d prefer that the jihadis do the dying.

Me too!

3 posted on 01/12/2015 2:12:32 AM PST by Rummyfan
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
They simply announced that we had won in Afghanistan, which was a big surprise to the Taliban

A month after our last troop leaves, Afghanistan will revert to islamic barbarousness, while the idiot-in-the-White-House continues to boast of victory.

4 posted on 01/12/2015 2:15:06 AM PST by Rummyfan
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To: 9thLife

Napoleon lost to an army. Not a newspaper


5 posted on 01/12/2015 2:15:07 AM PST by FatherofFive (Islam is evil and must be eradicated)
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To: Rummyfan

In the words of General Patton, “ You get the poor :):&;$;? To die for their country ( or their religion)!”


6 posted on 01/12/2015 2:15:30 AM PST by Morpheus2009
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The world is being rocked by a rash of "workplace violence," though what the Administration believes the Koran has against workplaces remains unclear. Those who eschew the willful blindness of the cowardly and foolish see clearly that the Islamofascist freaks are running up the body count across the globe. The question is what, if anything, are we going to do about it?

7 posted on 01/12/2015 2:17:50 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Rummyfan

Why? The Taliban are still alive and well. Omar never got killed or captured, and actually retired. Whomever believes the POTUS if he claims victory is a gullible fool. Which sadly is probably a big bite out of our country.


8 posted on 01/12/2015 2:17:55 AM PST by Morpheus2009
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...
The world is being rocked by a rash of "workplace violence," though what the Administration believes the Koran has against workplaces remains unclear. Those who eschew the willful blindness of the cowardly and foolish see clearly that the Islamofascist freaks are running up the body count across the globe. The question is what, if anything, are we going to do about it?

9 posted on 01/12/2015 2:18:04 AM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: FatherofFive

But Napoleon is talking about how powerful the press can be at breaking the will I war. The French had a culture of surrender after World War I, guess why most of them didn’t raise much when the Nazis marched in. Them there’s Vietnam, where the press was successful in getting our guys, even eventually our government, to give up on the war.


10 posted on 01/12/2015 2:20:45 AM PST by Morpheus2009
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

General international law got rid of privateering in 1856.

However, the US never signed that treaty, though it has not issued any letters of marque, I believe, since the War of 1812.

There is no legal reason we can’t authorize privateering, though our privateers would have problems since no other nations would recognize the legitimacy of their authorization to wage war.


11 posted on 01/12/2015 2:38:54 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

It was proposed during both of the great wars, if my memory serves.


12 posted on 01/12/2015 2:40:52 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

But not implemented.

Irrelevant in the European theater, and really, really dangerous in the Pacific theater.


13 posted on 01/12/2015 2:43:50 AM PST by Sherman Logan
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To: Sherman Logan

Those were not the only theatres in World War II. Not by a longshot.


14 posted on 01/12/2015 2:48:23 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
it is also untrue to say that all Islam supports the terrorists. Practically speaking that is not true. All Moslems support jihad so long as jihad is winning because it is apparent to all Moslems that Allah wills that Islam prevail. When sufficient resources for war run out then and it has been totally beaten militarily then many Moslems don't support jihad any more because it has become apparent to them that Allah doesn't will for Islam to prevail just yet. When beaten and stripped of surplus the Moslem world subsides into impoverished torpor and dictators arise whose prime cause is not Islam but rather power and luxury. It is probably not possible or at least is far too expensive to kill all the Moslems. What is necessary is to cut off their funds. No Aid to Moslem countries, organizations or individuals. Colonize the oil in Moslem lands and deny the Moslems in those lands any compensation. That is a start.

The desire to see all men prosperous is deadly so long as some men are Moslem. When Moslems have surplus resources- more than sufficient to allow the masses to barely subsist and the tiny ruling class to live in splendour- Jihad happens.

This is how it has been for 1300+ years. This is how it will be until all men are Moslem or none are.

15 posted on 01/12/2015 3:00:30 AM PST by arthurus
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To: Morpheus2009

France lost 1.7 million soldiers in WWI (more than the US has lost in all of its wars combined); when WWII came around and the people were forced to choose between Hitler & Stalin, they simply selected “None of the above”. Afterwards they threw away their lives in the Indochina War they didn’t want to fight (but we insisted was necessary to contain communism), then threw away more lives in the Algeria War.

WWII was an anomaly in which the main combatants (as far as Europe was concerned) were both evil (Stalin & Hitler); other countries that could remained neutral.


16 posted on 01/12/2015 3:11:01 AM PST by kearnyirish2 (Affirmative action is economic warfare against white males (and therefore white families).)
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To: Sherman Logan

“There is no legal reason we can’t authorize privateering,”

This has my vote as one of the most thought provoking posts of the year.


17 posted on 01/12/2015 3:21:53 AM PST by Gen.Blather
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To: kearnyirish2

The U.S. is becoming more and more like France every day. We no longer have a taste for war of any kind and when/if we enter into “conflicts”, we do so with lack of fortitude to actually WIN. Instead, we tell our warriors that they cannot shoot until fired upon (stupid idea). With the influx of muslims, France has been taken over without someone firing a shot. I anticipate the same will be done here as we spend more time on downsizing our military, trying to take guns away and “playing golf”.


18 posted on 01/12/2015 3:26:56 AM PST by DaveA37
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
2 ID VET, possibly one of the most powerful and profound articles I have ever read on FR.

I too am tired of the vigils and the memorials. Kill them all and we can go on with our lives.

19 posted on 01/12/2015 3:36:54 AM PST by Former Proud Canadian (Gold and Silver are Real Money, Accept No Substitutes)
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To: Former Proud Canadian

You might have noticed that I don’t often mark something “editorial,” “frontpage news,” or even “extended” very much, even though I post a lot of threads, but I thought this one deserved it. Also see this, from the National Post:

Conrad Black: Defending the Christian West
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/3245891/posts


20 posted on 01/12/2015 3:43:50 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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