PDA

View Full Version : Needed in Iraq: 28% more John Wayne



thedrifter
12-02-06, 12:34 PM
Needed in Iraq: 28% more John Wayne
WorldNetDaily ^ | 12/2/06 | Andrew Longman

Remarkable in the rhetoric of all the major leadership voices on the Iraq issue is the repeatability; you can trust that again and again cookie-cutter responses of wrongness will be popped out, the same errors re-treaded with apparently no imagination whatsoever. It is also appalling that nobody seems to know how to crush the insurgency in Iraq decisively. Forgive me for saying the very, very obvious, but here's how.

First, the No. 1 rule in Islamist-Arab politics is … kill the head guy. He who kills the head guy becomes the new head guy. Brutal, unpleasant, but true. So? The USA does not have legitimacy in the eyes of the Shia rebellion because it hasn't killed Muqtada al Sadr outright. Because he is still around they believe he must be more powerful. So they follow him. Put a cruise missile through his window and he becomes instantly less popular.

The reason the Sunni insurgency is still around is because Saddam Hussein is still allowed to rave on TV like a wino driven by drugs manufactured in a genetically modified Babylonian goat. Step two is to hang Saddam by the neck until dead.

Step three is to institutionalize and promise the targeted killing of the head of the Shia insurgency, the head of the Sunni insurgency, and the head of al-Qaida in Iraq, whenever and wherever those heads emerge.

Who?

Don't you remember that group that became a lot, lot, less dominant and effective when we waxed al-Zarqawi?

Oh yeah …

Next, the fact is when you waffle and promise troop reductions in the press, the terrorists take heart, swap Jane Fonda DVDs, stick it out and attack you. So, announce that there will be 5,000 troops arriving new, every month, because the president enjoys crushing insurgents and he shows the video of them getting wiped out at home. The inevitability of the failure of the insurgency must be hammered home to the insurgents so they are crushed and have no hope.

Continuing, you don't plead sweetly in the press for Iran and Syria to, pretty please, quit doing unhelpful things. Here is what you do instead. You tell both countries that the borders will allow crossings at only two or three points of contact. You station massive numbers of Iraqi troops there, then American troops behind them. Everything that goes through the border is searched by both. Then you tell Syria and Iran that anything and everything crossing into Iraq at an unapproved border location will be blown off the map.

To complete the process, you order the U.S. military to vaporize anything that crosses and has gotten one kilometer into Iraq. You do this relentlessly. If the situation doesn't improve and Iran and Syria don't start behaving, you move this line toward the border. Five hundred meters. Zero meters. Negative one kilometer. You keep on encroaching Iranian and Syrian territory with bombing runs, wiping out anything that looks like it is aimed at crossing the border until they quit crossing the border.

Smile sweetly at Iran and Syria and let Iraq explain, then, how it needs them as partners. As soon as they arrive at the assist-Iraq conference, double the bombing runs and keep it up the entire time. You will get wonderful results, great speeches and marvelous attitudes. Smile and enjoy it, speak with flourishes and politeness – but keep bombing.

Next, explain to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey that the border policies with Syria and Iran have finally taken root and that the lunatics who formerly were being porous problems have developed civilized sides. They will praise you for your work ethic.

Continuing, the American forces should, wherever possible, be put on search and destroy missions for insurgents, and the day to day wandering the streets should be given to Iraqis. They should continually and insistently using crushing force, putting up with nothing, finishing each job decisively. Bombs should fall on insurgent headquarters often. When the insurgents sue for peace, the U.S. should double operations and keep them up for a month before considering offers. The U.S. should not show favoritism when coming across insurgent groups fighting each other – the U.S. should kill them all. Eventually people will realize: Quitting the insurgency means participating in 5 percent annual GDP growth … and being alive. Why not try anything once?

Last, terrorists should be humiliated according to their own customs. Kitchener of Khartoum crushed the Sudanese insurgency and brought relative calm to that country for 50 years by opening up with the British naval guns on the tomb of the revered Mahdi, utterly leveling it. Any sight revered by a terrorist insurgent should be pulverized with a very American bomb and, preferably, a C-130 full of pigs dumped on it from a few thousand, splat, feet. (Can't we figure out how to make a cruise-pig that could be targeted with GPS coordinates, trotted gruntingly to its destination, and then exploded?)

Do that and you will settle the problems. That's how to make the enemy despondent so he recognizes that it's evil to be an insurgent.

Don't do those things and keep losing time and lives needlessly.

We don't need some tweedy self-congratucrat trying to burnish his man-of-the-century vitae. We just need 28 percent more John Wayne.

Ellie

thedrifter
12-02-06, 12:36 PM
A Straight Dope Classic from Cecil's storehouse of human knowledge
Was John Wayne a draft dodger?

10-Jul-1998

Dear Cecil:

In your book The Straight Dope you were asked whether John Wayne had ever served in the military. You said no--that though Wayne as a youth had wanted to become a naval officer, "during World War II, he was rejected for military service." However, it may be more interesting than that. According to a recent Wayne bio, for all his vaunted patriotism, Wayne may actually have tried to stay out of the service. --Virgiejo, via AOL

Cecil replies:

John Wayne, draft dodger? Oh, what delicious (if cheap) irony! But that judgment is a little harsh. As Garry Wills tells the story in his book John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), the Duke faced a tough choice at the outset of World War II. If he wimped out, don't be so sure a lot of us wouldn't have done the same.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, Wayne was 34 years old. His marriage was on the rocks but he still had four kids to support. His career was taking off, in large part on the strength of his work in the classic western Stagecoach (1939). But he wasn't rich. Should he chuck it all and enlist? Many of Hollywood's big names, such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, did just that. (Fonda, Wills points out, was 37 at the time and had a wife and three kids.) But these were established stars. Wayne knew that if he took a few years off for military service, there was a good chance that by the time he got back he'd be over the hill.

Besides, he specialized in the kind of movies a nation at war wanted to see, in which a rugged American hero overcame great odds. Recognizing that Hollywood was an important part of the war effort, Washington had told California draft boards to go easy on actors. Perhaps rationalizing that he could do more good at home, Wayne obtained 3-A status, "deferred for [family] dependency reasons." He told friends he'd enlist after he made just one or two more movies.

The real question is why he never did so. Wayne cranked out thirteen movies during the war, many with war-related themes. Most of the films were enormously successful and within a short time the Duke was one of America's most popular stars. His bankability now firmly established, he could have joined the military, secure in the knowledge that Hollywood would welcome him back later. He even made a half-hearted effort to sign up, sending in the paperwork to enlist in the naval photography unit commanded by a good friend, director John Ford.

But he didn't follow through. Nobody really knows why; Wayne didn't like to talk about it. A guy who prided himself on doing his own stunts, he doesn't seem to have lacked physical courage. One suspects he just found it was a lot more fun being a Hollywood hero than the real kind. Many movie star-soldiers had enlisted in the first flush of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. As the war ground on, slogging it out in the trenches seemed a lot less exciting. The movies, on the other hand, had put Wayne well on the way to becoming a legend. "Wayne increasingly came to embody the American fighting man," Wills writes. In late 1943 and early 1944 he entertained the troops in the Pacific theater as part of a USO tour. An intelligence bigshot asked him to give his impression of Douglas MacArthur. He was fawned over by the press when he got back. Meanwhile, he was having a torrid affair with a beautiful Mexican woman. How could military service compare with that?

In 1944, Wayne received a 2-A classification, "deferred in support of [the] national . . . interest." A month later the Selective Service decided to revoke many previous deferments and reclassified him 1-A. But Wayne's studio appealed and got his 2-A status reinstated until after the war ended.

People who knew Wayne say he felt bad about not having served. (During the war he'd gotten into a few fights with servicemen who wondered why he wasn't in uniform.) Some think his guilty conscience was one reason he became such a superpatriot later. The fact remains that the man who came to symbolize American patriotism and pride had a chance to do more than just act the part, and he let it pass.

--CECIL ADAMS

;)

Ellie

SuNmAN
12-02-06, 03:55 PM
better strategy than "staying the course" thats for sure.

SkilletsUSMC
12-02-06, 11:41 PM
better strategy than "staying the course" thats for sure.

Wow... Im suprised to hear you say that. Thats what Ive been saying this whole time man:D

SuNmAN
12-03-06, 03:11 AM
Wow... Im suprised to hear you say that. Thats what Ive been saying this whole time man:D


"staying the course" is the worst strategy ever. Anything right now its better than that, even rthough I don't agree with everything said in the post.

10thzodiac
12-03-06, 03:22 PM
I seen a documentary years ago and a Marine Raider said, "When John Wayne appeared before them at USO show, they booed him off the stage.