Strike Force Behind The Book: strikeforce.mp3 Writers Roundtable Interview With Dale Brown ATARI ACT OF WAR: DIRECT ACTION LINKS Dale Brown Interview With: Peter Anthony Holder When a former pilot turns his hand to thrillers you can take their authenticity for granted. His writing is exceptional and the dialogue, plots and characters are first-class... far too good to be missed.' --Sunday Mirror ‘Dale Brown is a superb storyteller’ --WASHINGTON POST ‘Dale Brown is the best military adventure writer in the country’ --CLIVE CUSSLER

No Gaffe, Just Fact
by Dale Brown, 2008

ARTICLE ORIGINALLY APPEARED AT TheBigFiveOh.com Blog @ Yahoo.Com, December 03, 2008

In an op-ed piece in "The Nation" today, Robert Dreyfuss says that Barack Obama made a gaffe (or at least a semi-gaffe) when he said that nations have a right to protect themselves.

Yes, you heard right.

He clarifies his opinion by saying that the President-elect should have said that nations can protect themselves "as long as they don't go crashing across other nation's borders." He denounces Israel for doing it "all the time" with President Bush's blessing.

Guys like this never make suggestions about what to do--they just sit back and criticize. Thinking of alternatives requires rational, realistic thought, which Dreyfuss obviously doesn't care to do.

India has just suffered what they call their 9/11. It's not the first terror act they've suffered. It was a carefully rehearsed, well-planned attack on soft targets that captured the world's attention for days, and it could very well spark more such attacks. The terrorists probably received support from the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, either by the service themselves or rogue actors within the ISI.

India (and the U.S.) probably know with a high degree of accuracy where the al-Qaeda training camps are in the Punjab region of Pakistan. India doesn't possess unmanned Reaper attack aircraft, the weapon of choice for the U.S., so they would have to fly manned Russian-made strike aircraft on bombing raids to destroy the training camps.

But not according to Robert Dreyfuss. The terrorists can kill, maim, hijack, and terrorize a nation, but India can't cross the border to destroy those camps. Retaliation is not allowed if it means crossing a line on some map.

Pakistan is politically helpless. If they crack down on Islamists and jihadists, they risk looking like weak puppets of the West and of India and sparking unrest or their own Islamist terror campaign. But if they do nothing, they risk retaliation by India. The U.S. has already staged attacks against al-Qaeda and Taliban bases and supply routes in Pakistan, without Pakistan's permission, because the government is unable or unwilling to act.

That's wrong too, according to Dreyfuss and his liberal colleagues. Unilateral action is not allowed. The "Bush Doctrine"--take on enemies wherever they are, at a time and place of our own choosing--is just as evil as acts of terrorism.

Take off the blinders, Mr. Dreyfuss. The world has changed. Turning a cheek will only get you beat up even more.

Dreyfuss says that Indian armed retaliation could provoke Pakistan to respond with nuclear weapons. True enough. Death by nuclear weapons, death by acts of terrorism, death by old age, death by accident, death by combat following the Rules of Armed Aggression--it's all death. It's better to pick the time and the means, to try to minimize your casualties and maximize theirs.

The terrorists think that by provoking India to attack that they can shock the Muslim world to rise up, attack the infidels and the pro-West non-believing regimes, and establish their own New World Order. That was the same thinking on 9/11: not only kill many infidels in a spectacular and horrific manner, but provoke the U.S. to attack a Muslim nation so the true believers of the world will rise up and take over.

Al-Qaeda failed in their mission, for one simple reason: the U.S. didn't back down. Al-Qaeda didn't believe the U.S. would attack, and if they did it would be with a few cruise missiles hitting empty, meaningless targets, like President Clinton did against Afghanistan and Sudan.

Al-Qaeda didn't believe the U.S. would come. When we did come, they believed we would leave the minute we took casualties. We didn't leave.

Al-Qaeda didn't believe we would keep troops in Iraq during a presidential election. They were wrong. Not only did we leave troops in Iraq, but we increased their numbers.

The people of Iraq finally started to believe that the U.S. was not going to back down, so they decided to negotiate, then cooperate. U.S. casualties in Iraq are down to their lowest levels since the insurgency began.

India needs to take a good hard look at the American conflict in Iraq. We didn't back down, even when we were taking as many as three dead per day.

America failed in Iraq because we tried nation-building. We failed because we tried to cast ourselves as liberators instead of what we were: invaders. But we succeeded in destroying Saddam's regime and proving to the other nations in the Middle East and around the world that the U.S. was angry and was to be feared.

No one fears India. That's their problem.

India is a rising but isolated nation that constantly teeters on the brink of wild success or horrible collapse. They are victims of their own success. They don't have the bandwidth to deal with the outside world on more than a commercial level. They want to get along so they can prosper.

India needs to be feared. India needs to do something to prove to Pakistan and the rest of the world that they should be feared.

This is their time to do it. If they don't, the terrorists will strike again. Just like al-Qaeda failed in its first attack against the World Trade Center in 1993 and we did nothing: they tried again, and were successful. The terrorists will do the same, or worse, in India...

...unless India acts.

Dreyfuss also criticized Obama because in his speech Obama said the "perpetrators should be brought to justice." Dreyfuss the Wise points out that nine of the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks were dead and couldn't be brought to justice. How petty of you, Mr. Dreyfuss, to point out that Obama should have said "planners," "co-conspirators," or "masterminds" instead of "perpetrators."

If you had only put as much thought into alternatives and suggestions rather than petty criticisms, your article would have meant so much more.

Welcome to AirBattleForce.Com Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA Cyberspace home of: Dale Brown readermail@dalebrown.info