Wednesday, February 16, 2005
STRATEGY LESSON:
Erik at Fear of Clowns leads into a hopelessly Francophile post by saying
There are three bad guys on your block. All of them hate you and would jump at the chance to kill you if they could get away with it. All are deterred by your well-armed and well-armored person, fortress home, and heavily-plated SUV. You fear they might all gang up on you anytime. You figure your best hope is to pick them off individually before that happens. For legal cover, you'll have to provoke one of them into some act to justify taking them out in self-defense.
One keeps blasting out loud military music all day in some far eastern language, and has put up a huge poster of his face on his front door. He has been spotted in parking lots, standing over an open car trunk, talking with a known illegal weapons dealer. Finally, he has encircled his house with sand bags and concrete walls, which have slots for firing, and suspicious metal tubes poking out.
Another one also uses loudspeakers to disturb the neighbors, blaring out loud prayers five times a day in some other strange tongue. He's posted wanted posters for obscure authors on utility poles nearby. You've seen him getting deliveries of big bags of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur. Several nights you've heard sounds of explosions, like giant firecrackers, coming from his garage.
Finally, there's the guy under house arrest with an ankle bracelet that keeps him from leaving. The ATF keeps searching his house and reporting that he doesn't have any weapons. His probation officer lives across the street and won't let anyone make any deliveries to him except just enough carefully searched bags of groceries to barely keep him alive, if anorexic.
Now, which one should you start a fight with first? The answer is obvious. To bring it back to the real world, of course you should first invade the one that you know doesn't have WMDs. Any other course wouldn't be prudent.
Erik at Fear of Clowns leads into a hopelessly Francophile post by saying
When I first heard the big news about N. Korea's big bombs, I wanted to make a post, "So it appears we invaded the only member of the Axis of Evil which was not developing nuclear weapons," but went to find out how to say "Axis of Evil" in French and never got around to making the post.Lefties always want it both ways, warning against Gulf Preemption II because lots of our soldiers would be killed by Saddam's awful power, then saying there was no need to invade when that proved to be imaginary. Let me explain why we did this with an analogy from your own neighborhood.
There are three bad guys on your block. All of them hate you and would jump at the chance to kill you if they could get away with it. All are deterred by your well-armed and well-armored person, fortress home, and heavily-plated SUV. You fear they might all gang up on you anytime. You figure your best hope is to pick them off individually before that happens. For legal cover, you'll have to provoke one of them into some act to justify taking them out in self-defense.
One keeps blasting out loud military music all day in some far eastern language, and has put up a huge poster of his face on his front door. He has been spotted in parking lots, standing over an open car trunk, talking with a known illegal weapons dealer. Finally, he has encircled his house with sand bags and concrete walls, which have slots for firing, and suspicious metal tubes poking out.
Another one also uses loudspeakers to disturb the neighbors, blaring out loud prayers five times a day in some other strange tongue. He's posted wanted posters for obscure authors on utility poles nearby. You've seen him getting deliveries of big bags of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur. Several nights you've heard sounds of explosions, like giant firecrackers, coming from his garage.
Finally, there's the guy under house arrest with an ankle bracelet that keeps him from leaving. The ATF keeps searching his house and reporting that he doesn't have any weapons. His probation officer lives across the street and won't let anyone make any deliveries to him except just enough carefully searched bags of groceries to barely keep him alive, if anorexic.
Now, which one should you start a fight with first? The answer is obvious. To bring it back to the real world, of course you should first invade the one that you know doesn't have WMDs. Any other course wouldn't be prudent.
