That's how sieges work, Phil.

How the hell did they deal with these people in the past?

Phil: "That's it. I can't take it any more. We gotta get out. Open the gates."

Dave: "We've been through this, Phil. The Mongols are still outside. We can't open the gates yet."

Phil: "But...freedom! I gotta get out. I can't take it. I gotta...I gotta weed the turnips! I left the lights on in the cow byre! I gotta buy another dozen swords!"

Dave:...

Dave: "Mongols, Phil."

Phil: "Uuuugh. I can't staaand it. We've been in here for...weeks!"

Dave: "That's how sieges work, Phil."

Phil: "But...the Mongols have barely killed anyone for days!"

Dave: "That's because of the walls."

Phil: "Are you sure? Maybe the Mongols aren't as dangerous as you said they were!"

Dave:

Phil: "I'm just saying, how bad could it be? They can't kill all of us!"

Dave: "That is literally the thing they do, Phil."

Phil: "Aaarrrggh! My turnips!"

Calvin Explains It All For You

Taking a break from Libyan Hi-jinks, a brief visual summary of U.S. economic policies and the interaction between the public, government, and private commerce.What's kind of sad is that Watterson drew this, what, a dozen years ago?

And, if anything, the corporatist nature of the U.S. political/industrial complex has become even more pronounced since then.

I like to call this; "Bitchslapped By The Invisible Hand, or, If We Did This With Our Pants Off We'd Go To Jail For Rape".

Operation Random Name

James Wolcott finds the name of our Wings Over Libya adventure pretty funny:

"Isn't Odyssey Dawn part of the fab Carnival Cruises fleet?" tweets Tom Watson.

To me, Odyssey Dawn suggests the name of a Seventies porn star, one of those spacier ones who made a couple of films until the prospect of working again with Ron Jeremy sent her back into the soap bubble from whence she came, and off she floated.

Yes, I can almost hear it now, the voice of coming attractions announcing: "Odyssey Dawn in Harold Lime's Hot Dog Girls II, starring Leslee Bovee, Desiree Cousteau, and introducing Sandy Melons as the Surfer Chick..."

Other talking heads had other ideas, including "a Carnival cruise ship", "a Yes album", "a stripper", "a Stephenie Meyer novel", "a Tom Clancy novel", "a Philip K Dick novel", (that's a lot of novels!), "a Cabbage Patch kid", "The name of one of Frank Zappa's kids", and "a straight-to-video movie with Jean-Claude Van Damme".

Personally, I kind of like the idea that the name the DoD has tagged this thing with is just two random words. The fakey "code names" that had been ginned up to make the little wars they designated sound cooler and funn-er than they really were, like "Just Cause", "Desert Storm", "Iraqi Freedom" were making me throw up a little in the back of my mouth.

But either way, we've come a long way from the days of "Operation Killer" and "Operation Ripper".

I'm still not sure whether that's good, bad, or just...different.

The Current Crisis in US Counterinsurgency: The Movie

I'm not trying to mock seydlitz here. I thought of this, enjoy the humor, and it seems to me that the methods of our present dealings with the inhabitants of southcentral Asia are about as sensible as the centurion's here.

As Ael says:

"Trying to figure a rational way to win the Afghan civil war without intending to own Afghanistan at the end is a pointless exercise. That the USA is actually trying to do this tells you that the motivation for the war has nothing to do with Afghanistan and everything to do with the great game being fought in Washington. Look at the cost of the war versus the Afghan GDP."

We are fighting for tactics and details and completely missing the point.

What If They Gave A War...

...and after everybody came, the enemy jumped out of his foxhole, yelled "Psych!", and walked home.

How long do you think it'd take before we realized?I got a hell of a laugh out of the idea of Obama as FDR. But I'm not so sure I should be laughing.

(Immense h/t to Matt Bors over at "War Is Boring". Support your local blogger and knock 'em down a couple of bucks.)