I know I missed last week but I had other more important things to do than write a blog… no I’m not going to tell you what I was doing…you’ll just have to trust me when I say it was more important.
My WTF this week is about the entitlement or our supposed sense of entitlement. In the information age we are under the presumption that we have the right to know absolutely everything about everyone and everything. We assume that because there is information available it is our right to have it and our right to demand any information be given to us without reservation. This is a very large problem because we don’t have that right, I don’t have that right, and they guy or gal down the street, the next town, other country simply do not have the right to all information.
Specifically I’m talking about the death of Osama. We do not have the right to know anything more than the information released in the initial Presidential statement. We had and enemy and that enemy, was eliminated by our troops period. End of our right to and more importantly our need to know anything more than that information.
You are certainly welcome to have an opinion about it and at least here to cause a stink about wanting to know. By all means please rant to your hearts content, this doesn’t change the fact that you or me, or Joe the plumber have any more right to know this information.
This extends to what we know about the Operations Team that carried out this mission. This may or may not have been a US Navy SEAL team. The reason that the SEALs, the SAS, SBS, GSG9 and other special operations and anti terrorism units are successful is that the public does not have knowledge about what and how these teams operate. If we start making information about these teams public then terrorist groups and cells will adjust their tactics to how these teams operate.
A real world example of this, and I tell this with no disrespect to the team involved, is that a reporter put a microphone in front of a GSG9 member following the successful retaking of a hijacked aircraft. The team member related that they knew where the terrorist were on the aircraft because they were able to see in the windows of the aircraft by lowering down on the outside of the plane from the roof. Any Hijacking occurring now results in the immediate closing of the window shades by those persons making the hostile take over of the aircraft.
As the public we simply don’t need to know how these teams do their jobs. We have congressmen and senators who are empowered to and can and do investigate and conduct inquiries into the possible wrong doing into the activities of our military and other agencies. And our Special Operations teams aren’t a bunch of adrenaline junkies who don’t follow orders. If you don’t follow orders and work as a team you don’t remain in special operations long before you are put into the field.
We further more do not need to see the photographs, video and other information concerning the mission and then open this up to the court of public opinion led by our sound bite journalists. A photo out of context can be made to say so much more than what was really going on and do far more damage to our safety and the lives of our troops and others around the world.
Wake up people this was not a Call of Duty Black Ops load out on the Xbox. This was a real time covert military operation lives were in harms way. Harms way is the military’s polite way of saying that statistically one or more team members are expected to be seriously injured or killed in the completion of the mission. For any military unit there is always the chance you’ll be placed in harms way in the performance of your duties. Because there is no way to predict what will go wrong and how wrong thing will be once they go badly.
Our special operations units and those of our allies do not need the likes of our sound bite journalists and video game Monday morning quarterbacks making a public critique of every step of the mission. Osama and his entourage were considered and known to be dangerous. Lets not forget that every photo or video Osama released of himself contained him either holding, shooting, or having a loaded assault rifle in his hands or within reach. You do not assume because you don’t see a weapon that there is not a weapon around.
If you second guess in a military mission, especially in a special operations mission, you get people killed and then you may not have another opportunity to complete that mission again. It took us ten years to have an opportunity with a high enough potential for success that minimized loss to acceptable levels and provided a real opportunity to capture a target. However, the capturing the heads of terrorist organizations is not usually successful and end in the death of that person regardless of what nation conducts the mission.
In addition because we have eliminated this person, we do not have the right to chant in the streets and cheer his demise. I’m not saying that we were wrong to kill him. I’m saying it is wrong to dance in the streets and act a fool about this action. We as a nation were justifiable offended when thousands around the world celebrated the attacks on 9/11.
We, in the completion of this act of justice, have to behave with more dignity. A nation’s greatness is not measured in its ability to dispense brutality but rather in how it reacts in the face of brutality. This doesn’t mean to always turn the other cheek or to turn an emotionless face to tragedy. It simply means that when diplomacy fails and the use of other means are employed it is done with dignity. We don’t need to put the heads of our enemies on the bridges spanning the Potomac River or on the fences around West Wing hopefully we are a bit more evolved.
Remember that we still have men and women of our armed forces in harms way every day. You can agree or disagree with why our troops are deployed but our actions here and the information released can increase the amount of harm they face every day. I think in closing it is befitting to quote General Douglas MacArthur, “Above all no one prays for peace more than the solder.”
That’s all for now, other stuff tomorrow
Happy Birthday if it’s your birthday and a very merry un birthday if it isn’t your birthday
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Have a great day and play nice in the neighborhood.
Ciao,
Gamer Tag: invisible don
PO Box 4425 Roanoke VA 24015
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