Echelon Above Reality

I've mentioned before that I have grave doubts about trusting the judgment of PhDs on their area of expertise. Not that I doubt their knowledge. But they know so much that they think it is significant to know which local whackjob is 95% nuts as opposed to the fellow only 65% nuts who we can work with--if we don't upset the apple cart by actually doing something about the nutsiness that surrounds the guy.

So it is no surprise that a Yemen expert has his panties all in a twist over our use of some cruise missiles to help the Yemen government fight jihadis:

With Yemen apparently on the verge of becoming the world's next failed state and a regional base for al-Qaeda, a series of U.S.-assisted air and ground assaults that shook pockets of Yemen last week might have seemed like a positive development in the troubled country's otherwise downward spiral. But the dramatic action, which appears to have resulted in a number of civilian casualties, may not right the situation at all. "The U.S. has been growing very concerned about al-Qaeda in recent years, but it seems as though the U.S. is coming rather late to the party," says Princeton University Yemen expert Gregory Johnsen, who contends last week's attacks would ultimately prove counterproductive.

He says we can't just kill a few jihadis and expect the problem to go away. Well, duh, doctor. It boggles my mind that so many experts conclude that fighting back is counter-productive to defeating our jihadi enemies. Just let them keep killing us without riling them up by resisting, and eventually they'll grow tired of the whole caliphate project, I guess is their logic.

Killing jihadis is a good thing as long as we keep killing them and terrorize them.

As I always say, fighting back ineffectively is counter-productive. Defeating the enemy is productive.

So let's not believe that a salvo of cruise missiles solves our problems. Our jihadi enemies will claim we kill innocents whether or not we actually kill them. So let's not get too hung up on the issue of whether we accidentally killed innocents. Work to prevent such deaths, to be sure, but don't let that issue keep us from striking when we get a shot. Remember, the whole uprising thing started long before our cruise missiles struck. Something might have angered the jihadis and their backers already, huh?

Let's kill a whole lot more jihadis and keep killing them in larger and larger numbers until they come at us--or our imperfect allies--no more.