I’m halfway through Clear And Present Danger. Once again there is a paragraph that just jumps off the page….

(Former Cuban intelligence officer now the drug lord’s chief of security after finding one of their drug smuggling landing strips destroyed (he assumes by Americans)….

“That the Americans had done anything at all was unusual, of course. After all, kidnapping and/or killing American citizens was about the safest thing any international terrorist could do. The CIA had allowed one of their station chiefs to be tortured to death in Lebanon–and done nothing. All those Marines blown up–and the Americans had done nothing. Except for the occasional attempt at sending a message. The Americans were fools. They’d tried to send messages to the North Vietnamese for nearly ten years, and failed, and still they hadn’t learned better….”

That was written in 1989…have we learned anything?

Edit: The answer to that would, for some folks, be…nope…read this at Michelle Malkin. From the Daily (not daily for me) Kos ….”Only a society blind with avarice or fear would see a military as anything other than an indictment of our inability to persuade! And yes, an indictment of our courage to try.” Inability to persuade…hmmm…convert, submit or die…definitely persuasion to be found there.  Moonbats.