Whacking the Barbary Pirates

Thomas Jefferson did better against Libya than Obama is doing. The Barbary  pirates from Libya were attacking merchant shipping along the coast of North Africa. President Jefferson ordered in the Marines, who promptly smacked the bad guys at Tripoli in 1805. President Obama isn't having such a decisive result.

Victor Davis Hanson writes about the progress of the "war." Although NATO has been playing soldier for 4 months and keeps issuing press releases that Gaddafi will be throwing in the towel any day now, there he sits thumbing his nose at the West. This apparently is the rarefied view of war as now practiced by the Europeans and Democratic administrations here in the U.S.  

My friend, George McGreer, loaned me a book (Over the Beach) about the Navy's role in the air war in Vietnam. At the end of the book one of the pilots makes the following point:

"If you make the terrible decision to go to war, you must be willing to tell people the truth- that war is a nasty, mean, shitty business... You either do it or you don't. And if you do, you go to win, pure and simple. You don't send intellectualized threats or signals to your enemy to persuade him to change his ways. He'll be kicking your ass in the meantime."

Good advice Mr. President. Right now it's Pirates 1 NATO 0. Let's do it or get out of Dodge.

townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2011/07/14/a_dumb_and_dumber_war_in_libya