Actually, no, candlelight vigils aren’t the answer.
Neither is diversity.
The answer is we have to kill them. We have to shatter their organization, chase them to the ends of the earth, and take them out of the game.
Or it will be our little girls next.
Last night, watching the network news, the serious-voiced man spoke as the camera panned over an impromptu memorial service in Manchester. He talked about how moving it was to see people come together, how diverse this almost totally white crowd was, and how events like this bring out the best in us.
Like hell.
Events like this should bring out the beast in us.
Somebody, fueled by a cult of hatred, waded a bomb into a crowd at a little-girl concert and pushed the button.
Parts of people flew all over.
It was a savage butchery, a throwback to a time when humans weren’t quite human, and some goat-humping bastard killed two dozen and wounded three score more.
At a little-girl concert.
At this point, something more than a “Keep calm – and carry on” t-shirt is called for.
At this point, we ought to think less about unity vigils and more about the sword-swinging display Donald Trump and the leaders of the civilized Muslim nations engaged in earlier in the week. It’s not Muslim versus non-Muslim, Trump said, it’s good versus evil. And across a broad spectrum of Koran-quoting nations there was agreement and commitment – agreement and commitment to root terrorism out and kill it.
A mad dog is a mad dog, and whether it’s my dog or your dog, it needs to be put down.
It’s time to refocus the war on terrorism and make it results oriented. And here are the results we want: They’re dead, and we’re not.
We need to buckle down, online and on the ground.
We need to crash their cyber game, and where we lack the capability to do so, we must develop the capability. The jihadi online effort is their command and control for a worldwide network of losers and haters, and we need to take it away from them.
You jam an enemy’s radio transmissions, and you make his online murder magazine go dark.
And fellow travelers who bitch about free speech get complimentary Ariana Grande tickets.
When disaffected losers in the shadows of the world’s democracies get their inspiration, instruction and marching orders via social media, you have to make that stop. And soon.
And on the ground, we have to kill them.
If the flavor of the month is the Islamic State, we need to make killing Islamic State our tactical and strategic priority. If the belief is that the Islamic State, seeing itself weaken as a territory-holding military force, will send its jihadis back to the European and American suburbs from whence they sprung, to engage in terrorism, then we need to kill them before they get there. As we flush them out of the last few rat holes they hold in Syria and Iraq, let us not only retake territory, but let us kill them down. Give no quarter. Prevent their escape. Deplete the enemy.
Whenever the jihadis give us the opportunity to fight them with our military on a foreign battlefield – instead of against our civilians in our homelands – then we should do so with great vigor. No holds barred. The rules of engagement are: You die and we live.
The partnership stuck up this week between the American president and the everybody-but-Iran club is fundamentally a fighting brotherhood. Trump said little Muslim kids should be able to grow up without either fear or hatred, and the Muslim leaders applauded. Between us, with their religious leadership and our pooled military might, people can either learn how to be a good Muslim or a dead terrorist.
This process began about the 20th of January, with an intensification of American ground and air action against the Islamic State and other collections of self-pleasuring losers. The American military is already in this fight. Now the American people needs to be, too.
And the world needs to be clear about our intentions and objectives: We’re going to kill the people who engage in, organize, support and fund terrorism.
And we’re going to err on the side of you’re dead and we’re not.