A Tale of Two Cities

All is for the best in the best
of all possible worlds
--Candide, Voltaire

It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness

--A Tale of Two Cities,

Charles Dickens

__________________________

It is through the lens of war that we now view our place in the world. Let's view two recently destroyed cities -- Homs (Syria) and Fallujah (Iraq).

The destruction of both cities came courtesy the counterinsurgency (COIN) handbook. We will conveniently elide rebellion and insurgency, since everyone else in government does.

In the 2004 Fallujah offensive, the United States Marine Corps cordoned off and blockaded an entire city, and systematically converted the landscape into a Stalingrad-like moonscape. This was not an action after hearts and minds, but rather, the eradication of insurgents. The U.S. affixed the name counterinsurgency to this death and destruction to make it more palatable to those not there.

Of course, unlike a true rebellion-suppression in which the government acts against its own, the Marines were mercenaries, sub-contracting their violence to a Shi'ia government which was suppressing a Sunni insurgency. This was not a proud battle for proxies for the ostensible forces of freedom.

Turn the page, and today substitute Homs for Fallujah, and yet . . . everyone is condemning the Syrian actions. The Syrian government is suppressing a rebellion in its midst -- the very thing governments are charged with doing. Think of our own Rebellion, a pretty bloody thing, and one of those one-off events in which the rebels actually won. But that is the risk a rebel takes: They might take your head before you take theirs.

So what are the Syrians doing that the U.S. did not do in Fallujah and on countless other map sheets in our Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©)? Is it not a little hypocritical or blind to accuse the Syrians for using the same tactics to which the U.S. sought recourse? In fact, the Syrians are more justified as they are operating in their own country.

Ranger's opposition to the PWOT is based on policies that are based in ignorance and arrogance, lacking any intelligent guidelines or purpose. The killing lacks direction and does not lead to anywhere of merit. In the annals of justified killing, actual rebellion suppression by a functioning sitting government qualifies.

Killing for no quantifiable goal is an unjustifiable military exercise.