Song of David

--Salome with Head of John the Baptist, 
Caravaggio

 Well, they'll stone you when you walk all alone
They'll stone you when you are walkin' home
They'll stone you and then say they all are brave
They'll stone you when you're set down in your grave 
--Rainy Day Woman, Bod Dylan
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The Greek's Trojan horse is often considered to be the first example of special operations warfare, but the biblical story of David and Goliath predates the Trojan experience by several thousand years.

David was a simple shepherd who qualified annually with his sling. His projectile was a stone, and though he had no training equipment or experience at soldiering, he received a personal pre-ops briefing by Saul, his kingly lord and master. This was the beginning fo the Special Operations Forces concept that the man on the ground, regardless of rank, makes the tactical calls.

Fast-forwarding to current events unfolding in the newly forming Islamic State (IS) caliphate one can see the similarity to events played out since time immemorial. David's first act after killing Goliath was to cut off his head and triumphantly display his achievement to all comers. To witness was to verify and perhaps validate the killing.

IS is doing what men have been doing since honing cutting edges on tools. The head is a vulnerable wobbly basketball-sized thing on a thin stalk. "Off with her head!" is the ultimate action of a despot in power. Broadswords took some heaving, and the Guillotine was heralded as a humane form of killing, but the head has long been recognized as the thing to separate from the body to guarantee death.

--A woman without mercy:
Judith offing Holoferes head

Salome requested the head of John the Baptist, and act resulting in a Feast Day, and Judith beheaded Holofernes, showing the Israelites were fond of the practice, too. So to say IS is behaving medievally is incorrect; in fact, they are behaving Biblically.

We can say human behavior has changed somewhat since David's time. Now the Israelites must show restraint when dealing with attacks from Gaza. But if the situation were left up to Joshua of Jericho, Hamas, their followers and all bystanders, with the possible exceptions of breeding-age females, would be put to the sword. Literally.

Why the feigned horror today at behavior which is solidly within the monotheistic tradition? Beheading is a human behavior. Ugly, shocking, but nonetheless, human behavior.


The IS locals routinely behead their fellows; this is not unusual. Why not consider the possibility that the two recently decapitated American journalists were Central Intelligence Agency assets, and it was in fact this affiliation which led to their deaths. This is not to justify murder, but IS-type groups routinely view journalists as covers for participation in spying activities. Watching (spying) is what journalists do, even in their unaffiliated form.

What if David had been a nebbish and missed his target, or picked a more frangible projectile? Would we be worshiping a different God? Would our reactions be any more or less hypocritical?

Monsters, Inc.

--ISIS, Adam Zyglis

There's nothing more toxic or deadly than a human child.
A single touch could kill you.
Leave a door open, and one can walk right into this factory;
 right into the monster world.
 I won't go into a kid's room. You can't make me.
 --Monsters, Inc. (2001)

What had I done?
[w]e were all quite likely going to be killed,
or beheaded, and for a news story
that wasn't going to change the world.
We thought it was important.
We had the best intentions 
--War Journal, Richard Engel
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A seven-year-old's understanding:


A neighbor's young son -- a rabid Star Wars fan -- once asked me to choose my favorite toy from amongst his vast collection of miniatures. I chose what appeared to be a fuzzy benign creature from among the field of oddities.

"I'm just gonna warn you that he's a monster," said Theo, in a cautionary statement.

"That's o.k. -- I think he's cute," said I.

"He eats people," said Theo.

"Well then -- I don't like him anymore," said I.

"He's a monster, and he does what monsters do. You chose him; you can't not like him for being what he is."

Lesson: Know the people you choose to partner with; if their behavior does not comport with yours, you will not change them. (Corollary: they will possibly change you, and not necessarily for the better.) It is Aesop's fable of the Scorpion and the Frog. This one idea is the distillation of half of the advice books on how to achieve a successful relationship.  

Ignore this advice, and the ability to say you forged a partnership will provide you cold comfort. Review the past 12+ years of United State's foreign policy and come to your own conclusions.

From the mouths of babes. Word.

Faster Than the Speed of Thought

--Extremism, Manny Francisco

 Surprise, surprise, surprise! 
--Gomer Pyle, USMC

 Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing 
--Macbeth (V, v) 

Oh foolish people, and without understanding;
which have eyes, and see not;
which have ears, and hear not 
--Jermiah 5:21
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RAW is on holiday now, but the news which rustles other feathers has entered our awareness. The responses we witness seem absurd.

[1] On beheadings by members of the Islamic State (IS):

Expected, totally. Go rambling about in their desert, and you can expect to be on IS's YouTube snuff favorites list sometime soon ... plan on it.

This is asymmetrical warfare at its finest. Didn't we just learn this in our most excellent adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq? Isn't this what Israel is experiencing vis-a-vis Hamas? It matters not the names of the players: the U.S. is confronting people who do not share her values-- in their backyard.

The photographer who lost his head was exploiting the situation, and the locals knew it. Professional newsmen or photographers are always looking for the scoop; it is their business. The word is, they want to "document history," but we have already seen enough beheadings and do not need to see more. This is an ugly historicity of our making.

We are exploiting them, and they, us; where is the surprise? Is this placing of ourselves in their grid square -- and the expected resultant sacrificial lambs -- an effort to re-ramp up a United State's military presence abroad?

This is not the first time religious fanatics have shed blood in the name of their cause. Why are we shocked?

Why this need to be horrified, and to jump through the predictable hoops of memorializing those beheaded? While it is a brutal death, to be sure, it is not without sense to those doing the killing. It is merely a method of gaining free propaganda.

If we do not support this lifestyle and their adjudication process, why are we present, creating it, and then documenting it?

IS behavior is not going extinct anytime soon, unlike the language of Wukchumni, which will become so when the last known speaker, Marie Wilcox, dies. So: what precisely is the purpose for the United State's presence in Afghanistan, Iraq or any of the areas of IS control?

The press and we have a field day with every new outrage from the Muslim world, but to what end? For example, what of Boku Haram, the Muslim group that abducted the Nigerian school girls? Off the radar, in favor of the latest cause du jour.  New and more grotesque stories are demanded by the commentariat, all to no end.

Lesson: Do not be a part of stirring the pot in Islamic jihadist nations. 

[2] African disease Ebola cured by act of god:

A doctor, one of two U.S. missionaries who contracted the deadly Ebola virus in Liberia and recently cured at Emory medical center, claimed God saved his life in a miraculous direct reply to thousands of prayers. In fact, the miracle was being born white and Christian. If you wish to call this fortunate confluence which afforded Dr. Brantly access to the latest super drug that cured him, then yes, Brantly is the recipient of a miracle.

But if you believe that, you also believe that the prayers of the African victims and their families are somehow inferior, as infected Africans do not usually recover from the virus. Such belief of a favored religion is medievalism at its finest, so to return to point #1 -- why the shock at the power of conviction?

Dr. Brantly further asks his fellow believers to pray for the Africans that their prayers might be heard ... by an obviously Christian-favoring God.

Lesson: Do not go mucking about in Liberia when Ebola is ravaging the nation, and do not claim God favors you over them.