The recent murder of four Southern California missionaries off the coast of Somalia is perfect metaphor to compare President Obama’s strategy in the War against Terrorism and the strategy of President Bush, or more correctly, the first president Bush.
When Navy Seals captured a young Somali pirate, they took him back to the United States to a courtroom. Tried and convicted, the Somali was given 30 years in a federal penitentiary. The response? More murder and mayhem.
The Gaurdian newspaper reported: “Pirates reacted angrily to the sentencing and have since vowed that they will kill hostages before being captured during military raids and sent to face trial.”
Just think of the reaction of Al Qaeda to a show trial in New York City of Guantanamo detainees. It certainly will make the Somali pirate threat seem like a bad joke.
But the first President Bush had a different, and more effective way of dealing with terrorists. When Major James Nick Rowe was kidnapped and murdered in the Philippines, Bush didn’t seek to bring the perpetrators to trial. Instead he instructed the Special Forces to deal with the problem, sending a message that ensured no one touched another American for a generation.
The “Rouge Warrior,” former Navy Seal Dick Marchinko described the response to the murder of Lt. James Rowe in his book Echo Platoon:
But fortunately (if there can be a fortunate aspect of this incident), his murder took place when George Bush was president. George Herbert Walker Bush may have looked like a WASP banker. But believe me, the man had the balls of a U-235. The day he was told that Jim had been murdered, he personally called Ace Lyons and told him, “Ace, this cannot stand. You deal with it.”
So Ace ordered me to set up an FX at Subic Bay. My prep time was ninety days – barely enough to develop the kind of tactical intel necessary to pull of a hit in absolute stealth…..My intel was developed by an old shipmate Tony Mercaldi, who was one of maybe three people in the world who know what Red Cell was really about. And Tony always came through.
He certainly did in Manila. It took him sixty-eight days of working without creating a single ripple to do it but he was finally able to identify the safe house where the ABB leadership met once a month. We hit it. Andy eah, we killed them all. Messily. With what the Hollywood writer assholes call “extreme prejudice.” Then we decapitated the corpses and left the tangos propped against the wall, holding their own heads in their lifeless
hands as a sign to their comrades that we Yankees are serious fuckin’ dudes….”
The Bush strategy against terrorism seems more effective that the Janet Reno/Eric Holder/Barack Obama strategy. If Bush were in office today, I have a feeling that a large number of Somali pirates would have a tough time sleeping every night.