A conversation

We get reruns of Meet The Press around here in the wee hours of Monday morning, around the time the night shift supervisor comes around to stick his John Hancock on all the paperwork the EPA requires me to fill out each night at work. He's getting settled in, and they're flashing the cover of the latest Newsweek up on the screen: "al-Sadr: The Most Dangerous Man In Iraq". I'm thinking, "This could get ugly..."

SUPE: We should have taken that sonovabitch out when we had the chance.

DR. S.: You know, he's likely to end up running the whole show over there.

SUPE: Exactly. That's why we should have taken him out when we had him in that mosque a couple of years ago. But no, we got rules that say we don't bomb their holy places. Look, you find the enemy, you kill him, that's how war works.

DR. S.: But you kill him and they just get another one to take his place. You've solved nothing.

SUPE: And then you kill him too. You keep killing them until they get the message that we ain't playing around.

DR. S.: So you keep going until they either surrender or they're all dead?

SUPE: Exactly! You have to be as brutal as they are 'cause that's all they understand.

DR. S.: Yeah, that's the way to win hearts and minds...

SUPE: The hell with hearts and minds! They're backwards, ignorant people. They'll never understand democracy. Trying to teach them anything is a waste of time. All they can understand is brute force! Listen, I was in the rice paddies in Vietnam! I've seen how they live! That's why we got to keep fighting them, we gotta keep 'em over there, otherwise they're gonna come over here, 'cause all they want is to drag us down to their level!

Ah yes, the Clash Of Civiizations. Time to change the subject; I've got an evaluation coming up in January, and he's one of them who's going to be signing off on it...