Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader finds that most of the day has passed before he sat down to post. This is because he’s been packing. Packing up the Villainettes, the Wee Villain, Mrs. Villain, and himself for a camping trip. Well… Not really a camping trip. More a sleep-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods trip. (Which is not the same as camping you see…)

Last weekend your Maximum Leader went to the beach for the holiday. He had a great time. He was, however, distressed by the number and quality of tattoos on beachgoers. But that is a subject for another post… Generally after a weekend away, your Maximum Leader likes to have a weekend at home. But, for reasons passing understanding, Mrs Villain scheduled the Villainettes Girl Scout Troop’s camping trip for this weekend. (She is the troop leader you see.) And thus, your Maximum Leader has been getting little bits of stuff put together for the trip. You know, picking up and packing various odds and ends… The logistics of it all aren’t on the scale of Wellington supplying the Penninsular Campaign - but then again, the Iron Duke didn’t have a pack of screeching 7-10 year old girls to deal with either.

(By the way… Who the hell ever heard of taking an electric skillet on a “camping” trip? Your Maximum Leader has heard that one of the other troop moms is bringing a hair dryer and curlers as well. What in the bloody blazes is going on here? Your Maximum Leader wasn’t planning on bringing deodorant, but was planning on bringing a Fairbairn-Sykes Commando knife and a surplus USMC Entrenching tool. Just in case… NB to the Smallholder: The one time I need my Spetnaz survival machete and it is down on the farm…)

Anyho…

After reading Victor Davis Hanson’s latest essay on NRO, your Maximum Leader was feeling a bit martial. The part of the essay that got your Maximum Leader’s goat:

Al-Zarqawi knows that his terrorists without uniforms will still enjoy the de facto protections of the Geneva Convention while violating every one of its provisions. If in World War II a German partisan in civilian clothes shot an American, he was likely to be summarily executed as a terrorist; in Iraq, every shooter is out of uniform - but, when captured, will likely be sent to prison and released. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman once marched Confederate prisoners ahead of his columns to ferret out improvised explosive devices (”torpedoes”); today for that he would land up in Fort Leavenworth.

Your Maximum Leader has been all for summarily shooting Iraqi insurgents captured while ngaged with US troops. And since Hanson mentions it, he would mind sending a Dodge Colt full of captured insurgents down a road to check for IEDs before Marines or Soliders pass through. But that type of behaviour doesn’t win hearts and minds.

Perhaps winning hearts and minds should occur after we make them so scared of us they piss themselves at the thought of a Leatherneck or GI in their vicinity…

Oh… And by the way… Have a fine weekend.

Carry on.