Find The Boots

I was reading BoonDoggie's post and got to thinking that people may not understand what he means by "they don't understand us."

What that means is: much of the Muslim world, apparently, lives in a hyper state of "manana" the like of which cental/south America has never seen. Literally, Insallah - "As Allah Wills."

I'm no Sinologist or Orientalist (rather be a plumber at Gitmo, frankly) but apparently Insallah is the reason for everything, nothing, and a good reason to do whatever suits your fancy. Based on the economic and literary output of that particular cult/religion this equates to, basically bupkiss.

I should note that I am no more anti-Muslim than I am anti-Lutheran. But I spend a lot less time criticizing the Luthies because they, frankly, kill fewer people on an average day, subscribe to western liberal democracy, etc, etc. I am basically a fan of what works. Were I forced to choose a religion I'd have to go with Judaism or Mormonism. The Mormons look pretty good, but the Jews have a good survival track record. Tough call.

Anyway, I think my reading of BD's post was: did the Average Insallah Muslim On The Street (AIMOTS) have any idea what might happen if, say, St. Paul went up in a mushroom cloud? I'd have to say: No.

Else they'd riot all right. But not at "the great Satan." They'd riot because if they truly believed that their whole world could go up in a big 'shroomy cloud they'd be as sh*t scared as the rest of the world was during the hot part of the cold war. And they clearly aren't - witness Iran's pursuit of nukes.

They should take a look at what Mark Clark did to the European version of Fallujah when he was headed towards his goals in WWII. Let's just say it consisted of daylight activities by a cloud of B-17's that blocked the sun - his rough formula was 10tons of HE for every building on the map. Then he'd have his guys drive around the rubbly bits. Civilians, art, history - not in the equation.

And the modern day "oh the poor people of Hiroshima and Nagasake" wailing and moaning was not present in the day, and for very good reason. I betcha, no matter what the official Sanitized History says, Truman was all about the A-bomb.

My AIMOTS friend, we'd been firebombing Tokyo and every other industrialized city for months before we had the bombs ready. A good night would see, perhaps, 25K civilians burned in their homes and shelters. (A shame, really, but they started it.) If we'd had those bombs 12 months before, there would be a dozen small islands missing from the pacific, including most or all of Okinawa. We killed 100K+ civilians in that little tiff and you know what? Not one person in the USA who knew about it gave a good god-darn.

You think you invented the secondary bomb to catch the ambulance crew? We perfected that in Europe and Japan - whenever we thought there was likely to be an overcast morning we'd run a mild night raid and then hit them again at dawn when the civilians and rescue crews were out. You know why that kept working? No survivors.

And if the whole country had known what we were doing to enemy and allied civilians you know what? They'd have said a prayer for their souls and worked harder next shift at Boeing riveting 29 Super Fortresses. (Heck, I still prefer flying the Seattle tinnies because of all the American lives they saved. And that was 70 years ago.)

Think it was all that one little spasm of martial splendor? My AIMOTS, you should read up on the US Civil war. We wiped out about 4% of our population, crippled another 2%, destroyed 25% of out capital stock, laid fallow 20% of our farm capability, and that was with, basically single-shot guns, horses, and bayonets. And it was just among ourselves.

So, you know what I think BoonDoggie means?

Buddy, you better take care of it before we have to kill you all.

Seriously, I don't want my kids asking me why congress is arguing about paying for cleanup of what used to be Jakarta but is now a radioactive no-fly zone. Or why we gave India ABM/Star Wars cover and they helped us make sure that Pakistan was, in the future, populated only by cockroaches and twinkies. Really, AIMOTS, I don't want to live in that kind of world and while you don't contribute much to the human polity, I have hopes for the future.