Duty of the Damned

They say that those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Conversely one may reason that those who live in the hard scrabble of dirt and gravel have no such misgivings.

We Westerners live astride the glass edifices of our mighty dollar. Daily those entrusted with the protection of our infrastructure and our lives star in exposes that showcase our most critical vulnerabilities. They stand next to the optimum point of ignition, note the weak link blithely and tell us they’d protect it, if only they had more money. As it stands they are not authorized to work overtime so they leave the camera crew panning across the myriad gas works and trundle on home to tell their wives and children how America is lost without them.

Through the insights gained by Stephen Vincent, Michael Yon, and Bill Roggio, we see a brave American soldier in the nitty-gritty action of urban clear and hold operations. We have seen the full circle of violence as volatile combatants are captured only to be released by the “criminal” courts who let the Jihadists return to the battlefield to kill again. Once again it would appear that the legalistic framework that has evolved in the “enlightened” West has hamstrung our abilities to fight and wage wars. We fight an enemy state whose strict codes calls for the literal translation of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”. They righteously hang 14 year olds for the crime of being a rape victim. They publicly behead the Saudi princess on the steps of a public administration building. They are proud too that they have the will to such barbarity. It is these strengths of belief by which the West will fall and many a by-stander will exclaim; “If we were to sink to their level, we’ve already lost”. But we sink nonetheless for those whose level we dare not sink to, they are ascendant, and their ways will become the universal way if we do not fight them, where ever the battle may take us. Into the depths of human depravity we must go and go with a purpose. To follow the Devil into his own rat hole, into the infernal nightmare, so that we can again lock the door and ignite the fires that keep the evil one incarcerated for a little longer. Endure the malaise of reciprocity in order to return to the world of light. To cast off the memories of demons and to lay a kiss unto the sleeping innocents who quietly slumber away while the warriors toil in their damning duty.