By Doug Patton
January 16, 2012
The story is told of General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing fighting Islamic terrorists in the Philippines in 1911. It seems that his troops had captured a number of the enemy. Knowing of the Muslim fear of even coming in contact with pigs, the story goes that Pershing forced the prisoners to dig their own graves, then stood all but one of them up in front of a firing squad. He ordered his men to slaughter several pigs and to dip their bullets in the pig's blood. After the terrorists were executed, their bodies were thrown into the graves and the pig blood and guts were buried with them. The terrified lone survivor was turned loose to return and tell his compatriots what he had witnessed. Rumor has it that Pershing had no further problems with the Islamic population of the Philippines. While the veracity of the story is undetermined, it strikes one as the sort of tale that should have happened even if it didn't.
Can you imagine Black Jack Pershing working for the likes of Barack Obama, Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton? Can you picture General George Patton (no relation to yours truly), the man who proclaimed that "Americans love to win and can't stand to lose" taking orders from this crowd of wimps? Try to visualize Pershing or Patton's response to all the feigned outrage coming out of the Obama White House, Defense and State Departments over a video of four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of a group of Taliban terrorists they had just killed. Obama, Panetta and Clinton, the three stooges of American foreign policy have expressed their outrage at this act because the U.S. is in the midst of trying to negotiate with the Taliban.
Of course, a spokesman for the Taliban concurred with the administration's outrage. (I know it was a spokesman because any woman who attempted to speak on behalf of these savages would be stoned to death.) At any rate, I can certainly understand Obama's reluctance to upset the Taliban. After spending the past three years bowing before Islamic radicals and cozying up to South American tyrants on his globetrotting apology tour, the president wouldn't want to anger the people who aided and abetted Osama bin Laden in the killing of nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. That would be wrong. In fact, in the words of liberal pundits Juan Williams and Kirsten Powers on Fox News, what these marines did was "despicable." Really? Annoying, maybe. Stupid, certainly — especially for allowing it to be videotaped in this YouTube age — but despicable isn't even in the ballpark.
Synonyms for despicable: appalling; dreadful; contemptible; wicked; shameful; disgraceful; vile; loathsome. Sorry. This doesn't even come close. Despicable is what the Taliban and their ilk did to us. Despicable is what happened in New York City, at the Pentagon and in a field near Shanksville, PA, a decade ago. Despicable is what the Iranians are trying to do with their newfound nuclear technology. Despicable is what Kim Il Sung, his son, Kim Jung Il and grandson, Kim Jung Un, have done to North Korea and its people. Despicable is what Hugo Chavez has done to Venezuela. Despicable is what Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot did to the innocents who got in their way. Tinkling on terrorists is in another category altogether.
Like General Pershing, our military should have the authority to do whatever is necessary to win against whatever enemy we ask them to fight. Our enemies should always know that no matter what happens, when we go to war, it's not going to be pretty or dignified or sporting. As Ronald Reagan once said, the strategy should be a simple one: we win, they lose, period.
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© 2012 by Doug Patton
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Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself much more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns of sage political analysis are published the world over by legions of discerning bloggers, courageous webmasters and open-minded newspaper editors.
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