WhenYouGottaIst

rant.pngI went on 24 hour duty at 7am on the morning of 9/11.

I don’t bring it up often – mostly because nearly all of my military career was spent in a MEDDAC, which is way different than being in a combat unit – but it’s important here. I ETS’d in Feb 2002; a process that had already started nearly a year earlier.

A year later, I was holding the sign on the right outside Wright-Patterson AFB.

It’s stuff like that (including that people didn’t read the damn sign) that led to me often being mistaken for a pacifist.

I’m not. I’m a WhenYaGottaIst. War for oil? War for land or economic prosperity? Screw that. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Gollum Cheney.) No. To defend ourselves? To help others actually1 throw of oppression? Yes. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do… or lose what you have.2

Yesterday, we finally acted like a superpower.

I respect – and admire – all the folks who hold true to the pacifist way and to the Culture of Life3. I really, really do.

But I’m deeply, darkly glad that son of a bitch – that pathetic pretense of mujahideen cowering behind his wife – got shot down like a rabid dog.

That’s all.

1 Y’know, like the people begging for our help in Africa.
2 Obviously, the question is how to do that without losing yourself. Ask the Operative from Serenity how he’s doing.
3 Remember that pope that just got beatified? Yeah, he wasn’t all that keen on war or capital punishment either. All of it was part of the “Culture of Death”… not just abortions.