26 Aug 16

Technology will save us, when we’re unwilling to save ourselves?

American military installations throughout Europe are receiving a highly-publicized “security upgrade,” as a response to now almost daily Islamic terrorist attacks on the Continent.

Security-related technology updates include sophisticated new explosives-detection equipment, among other unspecified enhancements.

All wonderful, of course, but there is a downside:

“As we implement these new technologies, visitors to installations may experience delays or other inconveniences when accessing our facilities,” says a spokesman. This translates to our military personnel in Europe, sitting for hours in privately-owned vehicles, in bumper-to-bumper traffic, in front of “enhanced” checkpoints. All lined-up in neat rows!

On 25 Jan 1993, on the approach to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) headquarters in Langley, VA, an illegal Pakistani immigrant approached a line of stationary cars awaiting entrance. He produced an AK and murdered two unsuspecting CIA employees who where sitting in their cars, wounding three others. The perpetrator later fled to Pakistan.

He was ultimately tracked down in Pakistan by US authorities, arrested, returned to CONUS, tried, convicted, and executed (lethal injection) in 2002, nine years after the incident.

In his confession, the suspect said:

“I thought I would be arrested, or maybe killed in a shootout with CIA guards or police.”

He gave us far more credit than we deserve! He obviously expected CIA agents to be routinely armed and thus immediately produce their own weapons and return fire.

Oh, that it were true!

As it turns out, the suspect casually walked back to his car, and slowly drove away from the crime scene. There was no immediate pursuit, and no return fire.

Back to the current situation at US facilities in Europe:

In news reports, I note no mention of distributing small arms and ammunition (rifles, pistols, shotguns) to individual soldiers, and authorizing them to be armed all the time. Not even our officers and staff NCOs are trusted with guns. They are still apparently all expected to “run, hide, and be good victims!”

We love to endlessly mouth currently irrelevant slogans like, “Every Marine a Rifleman,” but it is all a self-deceptive lie! Our military personnel are routinely unarmed, and unable to protect themselves and their families.

Our “response” is, as always, mostly symbolic!

No bureaucracy, no matter how streamlined and efficient, can begin to match the speed, effectiveness, responsiveness, and efficiency of an alert and prepared individual, operating unilaterally upon his own summary command and judgement.

/John