BOHICA!

Bend over, here it comes, again. Seems that NATO had a "weapons malfunction" and a missile or smart bomb blew up a slew of civilians over in Libya. Including children. Now Gaddafi, Qaddafi, Kaddafi, however we're supposed to spell his name this week is calling for a global jihad against NATO. Please don't bet big money that he means Belgium.

The NATO idiot press officer called it a weapons malfunction. Um, it blew up. It was supposed to blow up. It did not malfunction. That, if it was a malfunction, was a targeting error. Either someone punched the wrong number into the coordinates or someone was looking at some kind of photo and thought that this building looked military so (s)he let 'em have it. It doesn't really matter.

My father's war, WW2, they sent flocks of bombers, blowing up whole cities, and still had to smash Hitler with many thousand ground troops killed. On the other side of the world, the only reason we didn't have to invade the home islands of Japan was the shock of those two atomic bombs. And it's lucky the shock worked because we were out of nukes when those two fired.

The next war wee had, air power didn't keep the Chinese from coming in and almost pushing McArthur's troops into the sea. The civilian leadership, rightly or wrongly, refused to bomb China and the Norks didn't have much worth bombing. So our air was tactical. Effective, yes, but still only tactical.

Fast forward to my war. The beginning of the gunships and then the first smart bombs. Smart bombs were going to change warfare forever. No longer would it take hundreds of bombs to knock out one bridge or one factory. Now one or two would do the trick. It didn't work because we didn't have the political will to abide by our treaty obligations and go to the aid of the RVN when the North Vietnamese broke the peace treaty and invaded, again. This is one of the left's proudest accomplishments. Some two million Cambodians dead but, what the Hell, we stopped Nixon's war! Funny how most of the Americans who died, died in LBJ, the Democrat that was elected on a peace in southeast Asia platform.

Since then we've fought several smaller wars plus two fairly big ones in Iraq. Each one had air power up front, taking all the headlines, each one needing Armor, Artillery and Infantry. Big surprise. The new game, of course, is how we take the casualties after we win the war.

And now this. It was bad enough that we had the al Qaeda and the Islamic Jihad, along with all those Iranian front groups out to kill us, now we have a new bunch, with a proven track record.

Meanwhile baby Assad, the chinless wonder is doing far worse in Syria than anyone in Libya ever thought of. And how many were killed in Iran awhile back?

So, what, exactly is the rule? Do we go to bombing to protect oil imports to France and Italy? I almost said "go to war" but we aren't at War. The President says so. Um, if it ain't war and we're killing folks, isn't that um, what's the word? Murder?

Here's my problem. We are blowing these folks up, for no real reason anyone can articulate, or if they can, they haven't bothered. When Reagan blew up Qaddafi's place he articulated a reason, that Libya bombed that nightclub full of American GIs. Agree or not, there was a reason given.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Qaddafi has every reason to send whoever he can to not only blow up our servicemen and women but now, civilians. And we're going to say that it's not fair? Um, we killed their civilians.

Obama is going to be in serious trouble if Qaddafi manages a retaliatory attack and wipes out a couple dozen, or couple thousand citizens. and it ain't like that clown posse of Napolitano's is gonna stop them. That bunch couldn't catch cold walking through Michigan naked in January.

Does anyone in the Obama Administration manage to walk and chew bubble gum at the same time? I do not believe, even as war weary as some of us are, that Obama couldn't have gone to the Congress and said "Qaddafi needs to go, here is why" and not gotten the go ahead. Qaddafi could still retaliate, of course, but and least then Obama could have some cover. Not that it did Bush any good, of course but still. Some cover.