But what about this war?
War is ugly. War should be ugly. I watch the Bush administration trying to contain the fire, batting it back as they try to save Mosques, civilians, trinkets within the house that is on fire. The house is burning, you moron. You’ve got to put it out. If bad guys are using a Mosque to store weapons, the Mosque is already gone. Level it it and anything in it, around it, underneath it. If a block is harboring bad guys, take it out, the entire block, eliminate the fire, lest it spread and burn everything else. Put it out. Fuck the civilians, they should get the fuck out if they want to live. The house is on fire, get the fuck out, get as far away as possible, take your kids, your family. Don’t go fucking buy fruit in the middle of a fire fight and cry about your little girl getting shot through the head. Get the fuck out of the burning house, because it’s coming down. Once the fire’s out and the firefighters have gone, THEN you can come back and put your life back together.
Does that sound terrible to you? God, I hope so. The goal of war is to put an end to it as quickly as possible, lest we become comfortable with it. War must be prosecuted with extreme prejudice but no malice. War is terrible, war is not something that should be entered lightly. I’m sorry, but “credible intel” sounds too much like a hunch to me. YOU DON’T GO TO WAR ON A HUNCH. Hunches are for TV gumshoes. They have no place in foreign or domestic policy. I’m starting to wonder if we’ve learned anything since Vietnam. You can’t manage a war and you sure as hell can’t manage a fire… you can only put it out or let it burn.