The war with Muslims in the Mideast has largely transformed itself from conquering Muslim nations and reconstructing them as democracies (to wit, Afghanistan and Iraq) to the use of drones and special forces to kill mostly bad guys (and always a few “innocent civilians”).   But are these so-called civilians innocent?

The Mideast Muslim nations were quiet most of my life (strange people, men with beards, in dresses, riding camels), but they began getting very restless after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 1989, and today these nations are in total chaos.  Not only are the Muslims in this part of the world attacking U.S. and western allies and friends, they are attacking each other, quite like savages (to wit, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, and more).

Let me address the charge that I am a “Muslim-hater.”  When I speak of Muslims, I don’t care about Muslim religious stuff; it is no more important than Christian or Jewish religious stuff.  All nonsense.  All I care about is a peaceful world, and that does not turn on what people call themselves, their tribe.  Peace comes from peaceful hearts.  As the diplomats always say, “There is no military solution to the conflict; only a political solution.”

Last month in Afghanistan a suicide bomber blew himself up as he passed a restaurant on his motorcycle in an upscale neighborhood of Kabul; during the chaos of the explosion, men armed with machine guns ran into the restaurant and killed all the diners.  The dead included U.N. officials and American teachers.  These Muslims are savages notwithstanding their dialectic, plea to a great spook in the sky, or characterization of America as the Great Satan.  These people are disturbed.

President George W. Bush and his advisors wanted to civilize the Muslims (bring them democracy, like that could be useful for Muslims; the President and his advisors clearly had not read about the great and noble religion of Islam and the Muslims who follow the good book (Koran)).  Democracy has been adopted by Christian nations, with great success.  Democracy has not been embraced by Muslim nations.  Gaza had a democratic election and voted for an extremist Muslim party (Hamas); ditto with Egypt (Muslim Brotherhood).  Muslims are not looking for democracy; they are looking for submission to the big spook, which means, not democracy, but theocracy (Sharia law).  The democracy-civilizing approach to Muslim nations was promoted by President Bush as Christian In Chief (at the beginning of the attack on Afghanistan, he carelessly used the word “Crusade.”  His advisors made it clear to him  never to use that word again, but it was in fact a Christian Crusade, in full glory).  George made it clear in every speech that he thought freedom, i.e.,  democracy, was the “god-given” right of every human being, closing each speech with recognition of the omnipotent Christian spook: “God Bless America.”  The Muslims knew he wasn’t talking about Allah, a spook for whom the concern is not so much freedom as it is obedience.  But George and his advisors never knew this.  They blundered on blindly.

In any event, last month’s attack on the upscale restaurant in Kabul (they were serving Lebanese food) was justified by the Taliban because a few days earlier the U.S. and Afghan forces had directed an air attack on a site that had been firing on coalition forces; “civilians” were killed in the coalition air attack.

Part of the long dispute with Muslim nations and individual Muslims has been the claim that we kill innocent civilians (“collateral damage”).  But the distinction between fighters and innocent civilians is arbitrary, inaccurate, and capricious.  When we dropped the bombs on Berlin, there were no innocent civilians.  Ditto with Hiroshima.

While precautions should be taken to avoid killing unarmed people, including women and children, it is going to happen, given today’s powerful weapons and the Muslim propensity for conducting war undercover, so to speak.  They don’t wear uniforms.  They swim in the crowd like slippery fishes.  They conduct war by blowing up restaurants, airplanes, markets, schools, government offices, and churches (or mosques—they don’t care).

War is not a game.  We are at war because Muslim nations would not control their “extremists” (I call these people the Muslim slime).  These extremists are mixed in among the good Muslims; everyone knows who they are.  They are supported, tolerated, supplied, romanticized, encouraged, and admired by the ordinary good Muslim.  All societies are like this.  Badness rises up and goodness overcomes it.  Muslim nations are missing the goodness.  Civilized nations do not permit their own citizens to attack other nations or to attack their own brothers and sisters.  If we had Mormons going over to Egypt and bombing Muslim restaurants, government offices, airplanes, and buses, we’d take charge of the Mormons and kick their asses.  Muslims don’t get this feeling of shared responsibility for the tribe they have joined.  “Bombers?  Ain’t none of my business.  I personally don’t like bombs.  Death to America!  Allahu Akbar!”

So the point of this piece is to persuade people to let up on the “innocent civilian” charges against the U.S. military.  Suppose the slimy bomber is making love to his wife, while his children are eating porridge, and a missile blows them up.  No innocent civilians there.  Live with the slime, take the chance of being blown up.  It is not complicated.  These people want to kill us; we must kill them first.  Good Muslims should stay far away from slime.  The ghost of Fatima says, “But he was my brother; I loved him.”  Play in the dirt, Fatima, you get dirty.

But civilizing Muslim nations is not worth our efforts.  We attacked Iraq, for dubious reasons, killing 100,000 Muslims, wasting $1 TRILLION, abandoning Afghanistan to the slimy Muslims (Taliban), and making martyrs of 6,000 Christian soldiers.  We spent ten years teaching them how to drive and show up for work on time, all the while they blew us up.  The civilizing approach has to change; we cannot walk among them.

We can take the Christian approach and turn the other cheek (Jesus didn’t know about 9/11) or we can take steps to protect ourselves.  One approach is the legacy of President George W. Bush: launch a massive attack, destroy the government, and render the country helpless.  Under the Bush approach, it is then our obligation to reconstruct the buildings, government, infrastructure, get the electricity and gas operating, find the looted art, build a system of education with real schools, create an army and judiciary. and teach the workers how to show up on time.  A lot of Muslims are going to be killed—men, women, and children—under the Bush approach, not to mention a lot of U.S. soldiers killed and crippled.  We have many supporters of the Bush approach to civilizing the Muslims; there are calls for us to get engaged in a hornet’s nest called Syria and civilize the Muslims there.  There are calls for us to get involved in Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen, Ukraine, Venezuela, and more.  Let’s give it a rest.

It is good we have adopted the Joe Biden approach: strike the slime with missiles (drones) and special forces.  Women and children and men without guns will be killed, but a lot fewer than if we follow the Bush approach and destroy the whole country.  Indeed, if the Muslims had a brain, they’d realize that since they won’t punish their own slime, they will lose fewer citizens if we use drones to do it for them.  They should be grateful that we use drones, in an attempt to kill as few Muslims as possible—only the slime.  If drones don’t work, it’s bombs away.  There will be no “innocent civilians,” just dead Muslims.

Pakistan recently launched an air strike in its northwest provinces against several villages occupied by the Pakistan Taliban.  No one mentioned “innocent civilians,” but I’ll bet there were a lot of them.  The Muslims are playin’ us.  Innocent civilians, my ass.