Can We Use Swords?

In response to Long Time Coming...

a jacksonian The Belmont Club
Well, very interesting, there just might be room for a switch of Old Hickory in this century after all...

Please do *not* confuse Jacksonians with your everyday common conservative. The ideas of personal honor, giving help where its due, showing mercy to those that know how to show it, and helping someone who knows what surrender means to get back on their feet is something that really should cut across many lines, but is a straight line for Jacksonians. After wars Jacksonians are the first to lend a hand at helping to rebuild and try to make peace and friendship. The Marines get the right of it with: No better friend, No worse enemy.

Now this enemy of Transnational Terrorist organizations, of which Islamic stripe is the meanest but they are all a pretty foul lot, seem determined not to raise a flag, form a country, set forth something to defend, protect those under them and then interact in a decent fashion with the rest of the world.

Have I got the right of that?

Now, because they operate at this more personal level of small groups they are damn hard to deal with by law enforcement, statecraft or the military.

Keeping up?

So, these are low life, non-law abiding, abusers of liberty and freedom for common folks who seek no law but their own and often ignore even that.

Now that goes for your generic Islamic Terrorist and such as FARC and Shining Path and the such like. They just aren't decent folk who live and let live and really would rather just kill you as convert you.

Because these low life barbaric killers don't respect the fine concepts that have grown up between nations for the last few centuries and feel free to abuse them at will, that makes them deucedly difficult to deal with. Thrown in some basic bribery, regimes using Transnational Terrorists as anonymous proxies and simple gangstering with drugs and money laundering and you got yourself one helluva problem.

Luckily, the good People of the United States are loathe to give up on just about any right. Even something as simple slavery we leave around with a single proviso, just in case it is ever needed. And some things just fall into the shadows as 'progress' seems to make them obsolete. The old tool at the bottom of the toolchest that just can't change with the times.

But by ignoring the rules and throwing out the rule book, these Transnational Terrorist are starting to play in old tools areas. And because the American People have been polite we haven't dragged out the damn things for over a century. But against these low-life barbaric Transnational Terrorists, it may be just the trick.

Old tools can be given a modern cast to them and gently reforged for a new era and need. That tool is via the Letters language for Congress in the US Constitution. Unfortunately to even consider having to do such, Congress would need to be more than gelatinous sheep doing their best to bleat at actually having to understand their powers and exercise them in defense of the People.

By putting together the Treaty regularization power along with the Commerce power with Foreign Nations and the Letters language, Congress could recraft the entire asymmetry problem by reversing it. Let treaty signatories know that a long list of people, groups, companies and countries are either enemies or trafficking with the enemies of the United States, and shipment of goods or trade with those on the list is also considered trafficking with the enemy.

Now that will put liberals all in a tizzy and a good lot of Wilsonians, too, I bet! As those folks haven't come up with a better solution, they can stuff it.

Next put out bounties on the listed contraband and include the vessels moving them on that list. Warranted organizations will be put under the Congressional Law of the Seas language and allowed to stop and inspect shipping that does not have a certified and verified cargo manifest from all countries agreeing to same with the United States. This would require DHS to get off their butts and give a serious timeline to get that done. Also banking transactions entering or passing through the United States must be verified to come from totally legal sources and not from anyone on the list.

Now those free traders are howling in pain! Probably a few more civil libertarians expecting the USA to enforce their rights every damn place on the globe. You folks haven't come up with a damn thing on this and can join the others and stuff it.

So Americans and their wholly owned Companies and some private individuals of wealth would be allowed to stop suspected shipping on the High Seas if contraband and trafficking with the enemy is thought to be going on. If such is found and verified, either via Dept of Justice or State Dept. or other cognizant group, then that entire vessel and its contents would be hauled in and the Bounty awarded.

To those saying this is illegal and piracy, it is nothing of the sort! It is the time-honored and tested method of Privateering updated for the modern age. If you think Transnational Terrorists are inventive going after their goals, just wait until you hang out pure profit to Americans! Find it, verify it, bring it in, no questions asked and immunity from extradition within the confines of the United States.

The southern border probably needs to be sealed good and tight, but nothing that a couple of walls with a warning system and kill zone between can't handle. Give some of those UCAV folks a chance to test their skills on live targets. Less lethal means could be employed, but really once this sort of thing starts unauthorized entry starts to look a hell of a lot like spying. I don't care if it is just poor folks looking for a job, let the oh-so-wise President and Congress work that one out.

Now our Fine Men and Women of the Armed forces do a bang-up job against totalitarian regimes, nation states and the such. We don't want to distract them with piddly little tracking and hunting jobs either on land or at sea. They bust up the big stuff just fine, but the very fine teasing out of what is going where and to who is something I am quite sure Americans can figure out once they put their minds to it. And see a profit in it.

Yup, most of the audience has fainted dead away! Simple, easy, gets you safer in the long run, and once you take the glamor out of Terrorism and turn them into starvlings on the run unable to get regular supplies... well, that would suit me just fine!

I expect it would be a bit tricky to start, but once people started to see the first arms caches and cargo ships and aircraft coming in and bounties being paid... well that is heartwarming!

As my daddy always said: "The proper tool for the proper job."

Yes, the above is semi-in-jest. But the point is a hard and cold one. We do not need just an Army of Davids.

We need a Nation of Davids at War.
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a jacksonian,
Thanks for your excellent post, interesting concept… privateers. The only hole in the scenario that I can see is the federal government wants to keep all powers not specifically granted by the constitution to themselves, a monopoly of force does not like competition. That is why we still debate, as if it had constitutional merit, the right of gun ownership, and if that right is conceded, the right to take it out of a gun safe. Some of the most successful, government sponsored privateers were subsequently hung by those who gave them letters of marquee to begin with.

This really clashes with the even lawless murderers have civil rights debacle. Oh yea, let the banks seize illegal cash, this would benefit the new monetary system that the Islamists want to float. sidebar, I watched an episode of cops where the local police in some small southern town had pulled over a minivan full of children speeding. The rope-a-doped the black woman driver and yanked a wad of bills out of her purse. $1,500.00? What is a black women like you doing with $1,500.00? This is drug money. “No, I am taking a church group to Disney World” she said. “No, $1,500.00? This is drug money !” and they confiscated it. Privateering works for small town law enforcement. I worked on a highly sensitive explosives detector that could detect second surface latent fingerprints of any one who had touched an explosive material for a week or two. Incidentally we could change some of the parameters and detect drugs. We scanned a dozen 100 dollar bills and found that an overwhelming majority had traces of cocaine on them. This is the same justification that small town police departments used to confiscate money. Later the practice was quietly discontinued when the state department issued a finding that ~67% of all new 100 dollar bills had traces of cocaine on them.

That said the answer must be making fighting the enemy a profitable enterprise instead of a dirty little distraction from global commerce. Of course this is what the shadow warriors have always been about except with a couple more layers of deniability. If you want to have your country focus in on being global business guys, you want to throw open your borders to allow foreigners to fill your working ranks, if you want to sell your port management to the highest bidder regardless of their political or ethical persuasion, outsource it all. China can run the US government cheaper, and frankly, I doubt they’d do it much differently. They couldn’t be expected to ignore the interests of the average working Joe any more than our citizen kings that we have elected. It is about the money right? Now we know that we can’t ask Halliburton to do it, Executive Outcomes was sacked, who will step up to the task, the next Bill Gates or king maker?

I was disappointed to hear that you were in “semi-jest”. Privateers. If it works I wonder if we can go back to swords?