We'll Kill Them Until they Love Us

Townhall is going through a soft redesign right now which leads to some oddities - like today's Cal Thomas article being split into two pages, with 95% of the article on the first page and one sentence on the second page. Thomas is writing about McChrystal and trying desperately to split the difference - essentially McChrystal and his aides were right to rip into Obama but it is still against the rules. He then gets to the rules of engagement problem.

To win in Afghanistan, and make such things possible, our "rules of engagement" must change. American casualties have increased because of self-imposed restraints when encountering Taliban who hide behind civilians. You can't win a war by hesitating when the enemy is at a disadvantage. To paraphrase a familiar admonition: grab them by their throats and their hearts and minds will follow.

To clarify, Thomas believes we should kill civilians if it will help us kill Taliban insurgents. And he's kind of a wuss if he can't repeat the quote correctly (it's balls, not throat).

You might wonder how Thomas thinks this killing of civilians is going to work; the truth may be that Thomas doesn't really believe that there are any civilians in that part of the world (he's certainly written his share of Muslim Menace articles). Or he favors the black and white theory that those who are terrorists are going to be terrorists regardless of what we do. I don't believe either of those things, but perhaps Thomas does.