I have always maintained that using the military to hunt terrorists is not an efficient way of using government resources. We should instead use letters of marque or reprisal. Imagine if Congress had simply issued a letter of reprisal, offering a reward of $1 Billion for anyone who brings Osama bin Laden into American custody to stand trial, or $700 million if they bring in his dead body. His own followers would have brought him in within a month, or in the alternative, a dozen private companies would have competed for the prize.
We would have saved trillions of dollars and nearly a million lives.
14 Comments
Anon · December 1, 2024 at 12:19 pm
All that prevents me from hunting/arresting/accosting/sequestering illegal aliens is my government. Otherwise, I would already be years into it.
Just think of the cottage industry. Very effective at that.
Clown School Valedictorian · December 1, 2024 at 10:40 pm
The Surveillance, that’s the bigger problem.
Have all of the letters of marque and reprisal you want, but if you can’t hunt down the operators of the largest trans-national crime syndicate standing in your way, you won’t get that effort off the ground.
The whole thing seems to be fed off the USD as being the world’s trade currency and reserve currency, and so the Newly Elected Sovereign wants to bully the world into continuing to use it.
Which essentially raises trade with the US to the level of being too much of a pain in the ass if you can sell your goods elsewhere.
Black Markets are going to thrive in this new trade environment.
But it should be clear whose side the Newly Elected Sovereign is on.
Bluey · December 1, 2024 at 12:55 pm
I’d be willing to bet a few governments would jump on that kind of money too.
Big Ruckus D · December 1, 2024 at 4:18 pm
Exactly this. Consider the trillions made by various defense industry players in all the boondoggles since (and including) Vietnam. Sure, it requires the benefit hindsight, but basically every military engagement the US has undertaken post-WWII has turned out to be bullshit. Even the outcome of WWII no longer looks so good, given that it further enabled the soviets for decades afterwards, and ultimately lead the FUSA to ruin by making it an empire in a world devoid of any others, as we can now see.
There’s also the matter of having to justify the world’s largest, most expensive military. You are hard pressed to do that when they are just sitting around waiting for something to do all the time. So, you find shit for them to do, even if it doesn’t really need doing. And finally, using the
military to break shit is immensely profitable for politicians as well, since they clearly use these operations (‘kraine anyone?) to launder huge amounts of the money thrown down these rat holes.
Michael · December 1, 2024 at 1:00 pm
BUT Raytheon and such wouldn’t MAKE BANK while American dollars and blood is spent for the yearly bonuses of Goldman Sachs.
All those POOR Congress critters kickbacks would stop.
Pity Madame Guillotine couldn’t privatize cleaning up treason.
Steve S6 · December 1, 2024 at 9:13 pm
DING DING DING
Anonymous · December 1, 2024 at 1:57 pm
ISIS driving new Yota Hilux’s! Who authorized the PO# for those? Find that person, kill them and do that to everyone who does the same for every item your average terrorist uses…right down to their uniforms! Go talk to Gordy in shipping.
Chutes Magoo
Jay Bee · December 1, 2024 at 3:40 pm
$25 million wasn’t enough, but $1 billion/$700 million would likely have had some people talking.
I dig it, especially if you already have DNA/fingerprints/dental records/etc on file.
Divemedic · December 1, 2024 at 4:24 pm
Consider that the GWOT cost $8 trillion and saw more than 900,000 dead.
Tree Mike · December 1, 2024 at 6:25 pm
Well then, GWOT did what it was supposed to do, Wealth redistribution and, just as importantly, create mass death, suffering, chaos, poverty, misery, population displacement, collapse of Western civilization. That last one is a LLOOOONNNNG term endeavor.
MT Man · December 1, 2024 at 4:59 pm
Ahh a hunting trip with a possible reward!!!!
grumpy51 · December 1, 2024 at 9:33 pm
Listen to John McPhee’s interview on the Shawn Ryan Podcast – McPhee specifically talks about having OBL in his sights at the very beginning of the war but was told to stand down. He figured it out (and states such in the interview) that this ware was going to be a drawn-out process.
Just another means of transferring wealth from the worker-class to those “in the club” (reference to George Carlin).
Paulb · December 2, 2024 at 6:26 am
I get called all sorts of bad names for it, but my official stance- and I’m a lifelong professional mariner- is that I ain’t frigging dying to make you money.
I get paid well, but nowhere near well enough to die defending the owner’s stuff.
I’ve transited the Horn of Africa with mercenaries aboard for support, and didn’t enjoy it, so I didn’t go back to that ship because we didn’t get hazard pay. Nobody did, until the pay came up. That Tom Hanks movie didn’t mention that those poor saps didn’t get squat for their trouble. It wasn’t too good as a recruiting film, lol.
The pay ain’t high enough to die over. We make 3-10x what an equivalent US navy sailor makes, job for job, from the cook’s helper to the Captain, and that’s crappy enough without getting gutted by some foreign mong besides.
If someone wants me to risk a fight, they have to pay me. Payroll is already the first or second largest expense aboard, depending on fuel burn, so that would need to be quadrupled or more at a minimum. At that point you’re approaching Navy levels of cost per day, and that’s before you factor in that we’d be wanting better health care and bennies than we get now, which have been lamentable since our specialty clinics got shut down in the 80’s. There’s no such thing as a merchant mariner over 50 who either can walk without a limp or who has full range of motion in his shoulders. You might avoid one, but not both. Something gets damaged. If I’m gonna fight, I’m gonna get me some VA equivalent care, which as awful as it is, beats what we have.
I wonder if soldiers get this crabby when straphangers and shoemakers uggest new ways for them to die at work?
Aesop · December 4, 2024 at 2:55 am
It could be even better than that:
Sell Letters Of Marque at public auction, and cruise lines will open a whole new division, with Barrett .50BMGs and Mk-19 AGLs on the rails, and pirate safaris by average citizens will become a multi-billion dollar annual industry.
Pay cash bounties for illegal aliens, dead or alive, and border crossings will dwindle to nothing, forever, overnight.
Even the cartels couldn’t fight a rifle behind every blade of grass, and charter boat captains and the Commemorative Air Force would be taking out drug transport vehicles right and left like an entire VFW post going on a bear hunt.
Make Bagging And Tagging The World’s Biggest @$$holes Great Again.
Comments are closed.