Things That Go Bang

Lately there's been a lot of talk by people about Libya and "no fly zones." It almost seems as though thinking about what you are proposing before saying something might make them seem ... I don't know ... wimpy. Some of these folks come from a background that ought to make them familiar with ordinance and what it does.

You can't just tell someone they can't fly; you have to make it impossible. That means air defense systems must go away and the way to do that is to break them and that takes things that go bang. Stuff that goes bang does just that and anything anywhere near it gets broken also. Whether the targeted entity makes any effort to place such systems with public cover or not it will not be the only thing broken. Men, women, and children who have no stake in the continuation of Ghadafi will be part of the damage. They will be killed or badly injured.

Taking out the infrastructure of air defense means that you have attacked a nation. What ever lofty goals precede the action - it is an act of war to bomb a nation, which Libya is. We have been at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in actuality, Pakistan - all primarily Muslim nations. We are not making a lot of friends with our things that go bang. We especially are not making friends with the innocent casualties that keep happening.

Maybe the videos of smart weapons and plain distance has blurred our ability to understand just what the effects of ordinance are. There is a lot of heat, a lot of fast moving air, and a lot of flying stuff composed of the stuff that was broken and the stuff the broke it. None of that is good for organics - like humans.