Recently, I posted about Hillary's latest trip to Afghanistan, in an entry titled Snackin' On Cold Shoulder.

Well, the plot thickens. I went out to run some errands this afternoon, and stopped to eat in one of the local seafood joints - had some boiled shrimp, a dozen oysters and a coupla beers.

Sitting next to me was a young clean-cut guy talking to his buddy. I couldn't help but overhear the conversation. As it happens, he was an Air Force C-130 crew chief, an E-4. He'd just gotten back from Afghanistan, Kandahar to be exact.

So, I struck up a conversation with him, and conducted a low-level interrogation. :-)

"Still suck over there?"

"Oh yeah, that's one fucked-up country. You never hear shit about it since Iraq, but there's a bomb or two going off almost every day."

Don't recall the rest of the conversation well enough to quote it, but he was of the opinion that it'd be a long damn time before anything like a democracy could work there, as most of the people can't read and write, don't know why we came over there to occupy the country, and don't have the faintest idea what a political party or a platform of ideas is - to them, it boils down to would you rather have your tribal chief be in charge, so your dad and uncles and stuff can get the best jobs, or let the other tribe's chief have the job, with all the pork and largesse flowing to his family and cronies?

Makes me think maybe they do have the democratic process distilled down to its finest essence, so far as it operates without the rule of law, a judiciary, and all the other checks and balances we use over here in the Republic, but that's a 'hol 'nother essay.

Finally, I got this tidbit from him - when Hillary was over there, she was shuttled around the region in a BlackHawk helicopter, which was known by the troops concerned with her transport and security as, get this...

"Broomstick One"

(snort)

Funny thing, though, is this - had that chopper come under some sort of attack, those very same troops that used that term would, I've no doubt in my mind, fought like lions to defend it, and therein lies a tale about what makes America great.

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... when you're kvetching about your political opponents.

I don't normally just post stuff I get in my inbox, but I laughed when I read this email. I does put a bit of perspective on how long things like nationbuilding, and "winning the peace" can, and should take.

I feel obliged to point out that it took years to quell the last remnants of Nazi resistance after the end of WWII, it was almost two years before the Marshall Plan was even passed by Congress, and the rebuilding of Europe took decades.

I guess that Truman just didn't have a plan. :-)

Anyway, on to the mail...

Some folks are complaining on how long the war is taking but consider this:

It took less time to take Iraq than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

It took less time to find Saddam's sons in Iraq than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

It took less time for the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard than it took Teddy Kennedy to call the police after his Oldsmobile sunk at Chappaquiddick.

It took less time to take Iraq than it took to count the votes in Florida.

And I'll add a prediction: It'll take longer to try Saddam than it took to run him down.

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There is now in the international community at least a moderate level of controversy as to the proper way to deal with Saddam.

Funny, isn't it, that the very same folks that have been clamoring for the US to immediately turn the governing of Iraq over to the Iraqis seem to think that the Iraqis are not yet competent to try Saddam themselves.

Chief among their objections to trying him there is the fact that he will almost certainly get the death penalty after he is found guilty of the crimes he committed against the Iraqi people.

Funnily enough, I can almost agree, if for nothing more than an inability on my part to imagine a method to kill him that is within even a few orders of magnitude as long and painful as he deserves.

The Romans had a interesting way to deal with defeated foes. At the end of a successful military campaign, the Senate would pass a resolution allowing the victorious Roman general a triumph, - that is, a celebratory victory parade through the streets of Rome. It was the direct ancestor of our custom of the ticker-tape parade.

The parade would typically consist of selected units of the legions that took part in the fighting, (the only time that armed legioins were allowed in the city proper) with the triumphal general himself along for the ride in a chariot, with his face painted red. (The face painting, and the clothing the generals wore made them resemble a very old and now lost ceramic statue of the Capitoline Jupiter, which had been fired from a reddish clay)

Included in the procession would be wagons (think parade floats) full of the treasure and arms captured from the enemy, prisoners in chains, and the defeated ruler(s) of the enemy, often accompanied by their wives, children and inner circle. Other miscellaneous items included in the parade would be scale models and paintings of the cities or forts captured in the war, wild beasts from the regions involved, and various musicians and dancers.

After the parade ended, the general would sacrifice some animals to Jupiter, the most prominent of the enemy leaders would be executed, while the rest of the prisoners would be "pardoned," to allow them to be sold into slavery, and they'd then commence to throw a bigass party throughout the entire city, with the tab for the free food and drink being picked up by the general being honored, who typically paid for the festivities with some of the loot from the war.

Seems the Romans were not afraid to gloat.

While such a display may seem barbarous to modern sensibilities, a triumph was the ancient equivalent of a multi-media display of the sort that we take for granted today - in the days before global means of communication, it was the only chance for the common man of Rome to see the enemy they had spent blood and treasure to defeat, to learn of the major battles of the campaign, and to witness the aftermath of the Roman victory. In that light, it seems more understandable.

Are we so far removed from them, after all? I think not. I imagine the prospect of a parade through New York, past the gaping hole where the Twin Towers stood, with spit-shined companies of the 82nd and the Fourth Infantry marching through the streets, followed by burnt-out hulks of Iraqi armor on trailers pulled by Abrams tanks, ranks of shuffling Feyadeen Saddam shackled together, mobs of newly freed Iraqis dancing and shouting with glee, followed by Saddam walking in chains behind a Bradley IFV driven by the CentCom commander, might draw a sizeable crowd. :-)

It might even be instructive to run that parade through other cities, too - cities like Damascus, Tehran, Paris, Cairo, and just maybe even Mecca. :-) That would let the Arab street see the stuff that Al-Jezeerah doesn't want to broadcast.

After that, keep him in a cage, with a webcam on him 24/7. Humiliate him in every way we can imagine. Put him on display like a carnival freak. Sell lottery tickets for the chance to pelt him with rotten fruit; let the relatives of his many victims smack him in the snoot with their Reeboks. All the while telling anyone that'll listen that we'll put him down like a rabid dog just as soon as he begs us to. Let him every day demonstrate to the world again that he'd rather live on his knees in cowardly shame than die on his feet with some measure of grudging respect, the very same choice he made last Saturday.

Yeah, I know that'll never happen, and I don't, truly, even think that it should. Still, it appeals to the unenlightened reptile part of my brain, to heap further degradation and disappointment on the Arabs that looked on this cowardly bully as the next Saladin, and forgave his murdering ways all for the sake of the rotten dream of PanArabia.

So, what do we do with him?

As useful as he could be alive, I think he needs to be tried and executed as quickly as possible.

For one simple reason - he's a security risk.

Imagine some of his followers taking a elementary school full of kids here hostage, and demanding that we release him, or they start killing kids. You wanna be the President that makes the call on how to deal with that?

How about a message that says there's a Wahhabist nuke hidden in a major US city that'll blow unless he's freed?

Wring him dry of any useful info he has, particularly about those European countries that were complicit in illegally selling him arms and equipment in defiance of the UN sanctions, and if you think I'm talking about France and Germany, you are correct, then let the Iraqis send him to hell in whatever manner they like the best.

ASAP.

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