The Chicago Way and the shooting at Ft. Hood

I'm a big fan of Chuck Muth and his latest column gives us a lot to think about. But there are two messages from his column we ought to heed.

What Hollywood Can Teach Us About the Fort Hood Massacre

Most Americans have this whole Fort Hood massacre all wrong. Maj. Nidal M. Hassan was not a terrorist. And he wasn’t a mass murderer. And he may not even have been a coward.

Maj. Hassan was an enemy combatant.

And until we come to grips with that reality, as well as the fact that we are still a nation at war, the United States will continue to suffer such needless and unnecessary losses.

Since so many Americans have been undereducated by our government-run public schools, let’s refer to a system of education which most of us can readily relate to in order to understand what’s really going on here: Hollywood movies.

In The Patriot starring Mel Gibson, we learned that under-trained and under-armed American militia hid behind trees in the woods and waited for the British troops to ride up. They would then open fire without warning, attempting to take out the officers first in order to instill chaos among the remaining soldiers, thereby making it easier to pick them off and wipe them out.

In that sense, American militiamen were the colonial version of IEDs (improvised explosive devices).

A rather unsettling thought, is it not?

For their part, the British thought such tactics by the militia were as cowardly and ungentlemanly as we do now about Taliban roadside attacks on U.S. military convoys in Afghanistan. But both the militia and the Taliban used/use what little military tactics in war they had/have at their disposal against a superior enemy military force. As they say, all’s fair.

And what red-blooded American can ever forget the 1967 World War II classic The Dirty Dozen starring Lee Marvin? And who did we root for in that story, the Americans or the Germans? And what was the plot of that movie again? Oh, yeah: “A U.S. Army Major is assigned a dozen convicted murderers to train and lead them into a mass assassination mission…”

Gulp.

This is why I say Hassan wasn’t a terrorist. He didn’t attack a subway train or a nightclub or a shopping mall populated by civilians. No, he attacked enemy soldiers on an enemy military base. And he used what he had at his disposal – a surprise attack on unarmed soldiers which gave him a tactical advantage.

Most of us probably consider this attack cowardly, but it was right out of Sun Tzu’s Art of War textbook:

“You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places that are undefended. . . .He who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven, making it impossible for the enemy to guard against him. This being so, the places that he shall attack are precisely those that the enemy cannot defend.”

Like the Soldiers Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas.

Not that we Americans shouldn’t be outraged by the attack. We should. But part of our outrage should be directed against the idiots who decided that American military personnel need not be armed and protected at all times on a military installation during a time of war, even on American soil.

Maj. Nidal Hassan was an enemy infiltrator. Or maybe he was a modern-day version of Benedict Arnold…a traitor. Either way, his was an act of war. And a very successful one. Read more....

Muth then connects these thoughts with one of my favorite quotes from the movie "The Untouchables":

“You said you wanted to get Capone. Do you really wanna get him? You see what I’m saying is, what are you prepared to do? . . . If you open the can on these worms you must be prepared to go all the way. Because they’re not gonna give up the fight, until one of you is dead. You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. THAT’S the Chicago way! And that’s how you get Capone. Now do you want to do that?”

And Muth is right in his premise. Our enemies are fighting a war. As Muth says, "They can’t be reasoned with. They can’t be negotiated with. Like a rabid dog, they won’t give up until one of us is dead." We need to not only accept this, but understand it and react accordingly.

But there is also a political message in this quote that we should heed. President Barack Obama and many of the people who advise him adhere to this 'Chicago way' in a political sense, if not in a military one. Their actions in pushing their socialist-leaning agenda proves this point.

And just like in the military lesson, if Americans are going to be effective in defeating the policies and laws that turn us away from the freedoms our founders guaranteed for us, we need to understand that it is a war - and they aren't going to give up until they win.

So the question 'Now do you want to do that?' is applicable to those who say they want freedom and liberty and/or just want the government to 'leave them alone'.

Are you willing to do what it takes? What are you prepared to do?