The Glade 4.0

Well, guess what? A lot of people who "hate America" are little whiners that like coming up with cartoonish caricatures of evil Americans. This attitude right here is why so many Americans don't take hate against America seriously; it's simply impotent rage and resentment that someone else's country is more powerful than one's own.

America isn't responsible for making the plying field between it and anyone else level. It's hilarious; people with this attitude are the first ones to tell Americans we're just like everyone else and shouldn't talk down to or try to dictate to the rest of the world, but when we act in our own interest like everyone else, it's all of a sudden a problem because we're more capable of doing so.

Anti-American hypocrisy is just the fashionable thing to do.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

They sort of are, but there's only 1,000 marines dedicated to that at 150 installations world-wide. 100 of those are the Battalion HQ at Quantico too, so that means an average of 6 marines per post.

Most posts probbly couldn't support a terribly large Marine guard force in the first place.

That doesn't stop people from trying to count these diplomatic missions protected by Marines as "military bases" when complaining we have too many in foreign countries.

Embassy defense, now hat I think about it, would be an exceedingly complex tactical problem. You've got a ton of noncombatants to protect, you're very confined, and while the Embassy is sovereign territory of your nation, the area around it is territory of the host. Therefore, if you do pretty much anything to counter a threat before it actually enters embassy grounds, you're the one committing the act of war.

A Marine guard is a good defense against a one-off threat like a car or suicide bomber, but not so much against a mob.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Claustewitz would agree as well.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

And now the Yemen Embassy. Really should review the security protocols in Middle East Embassies. Huge garrison in Denmark...not so much, Egypt probably.

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Yemen has actually done a better job responding than either Libya or Egypt.

Protestors were driven away by Yemeni police with tear gas.



As opposed to this jackass in Egypt



Yeah, would you please put an end to people saying naughty things about our religion? In the meantime I'll ask my citizens nicely to please stop breaking the law.

Yemeni President at least has the good grace to apologize, by comparison.



As to the Al Quaeda-versus-film motivation, it seems pretty likely at this point that Al Quaeda instigators used the film as a tool to get young men with nothing better to do riled into an angry mob. September 11th as the start wasn't a coincidence. Terrorists of every stripe love to do things on anniversaries; they think it's scarier that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We may actually get our wish in regards to an aid cut-off.

Not holding my breath though

2 destroyers, 50 marines for Libya

I still wouldn't want to try to defend a consulate or embassy though, even with 50 Marines, although it's a lot more feasible as a short-term measure than a long-term security plan. Then again, I've never seriously looked at embassy defense as a tactical problem. These guys no doubt have a developed doctrine and plan for doing it.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Can't vouch for how widespread this is or to what degree it's being staged by the Libyan government, but seems worth noting when evaluating the Libyan response:


In some photos, the English writing was apparently Photoshopped in by The Atlantic as translations of the Arabic writing that was actually on those signs. Others look to my eye as if they were actually written in English (e.g. kid holding a sign that misspells Islam as "Eslam" and Prophet as "Profit").





Additional photos spoilered for size. Others at the link.

That is so two pages ago.
viewtopic.php?p=213294#p213294

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Which bodes well for the ability of the Libyan government to control this sort of riot on its own. Benghazi was where the anti-Quaddhaffi rebellion started; most citizens there probably have positive views of the help NATO gave getting rid of him.

Libya, Egypt, and Yemen are all different countries and should be treated as such.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

D'oh!

In my defense, though, the firewall at my office blocks shortened links like the one in Elm's post, so I wasn't able to click through when I saw it the first time around.

I am just teasing

So rumor has it the Marines guarding the Egyptian embassy were forbidden from having live ammo?

http://freebeacon.com/reports-marines-n ... live-ammo/

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Assuming that's true, the shocking thing is not that the Marines were walking around on everyday duty without live ammunition loaded and chambered, but that ammunition was not issued, loaded, and chambered at once when the protest turned violent and it became obvious the crowd would attempt penetration of the embassy.

The military has a very odd relationship with soldiers (or in this case, Marines) walking around with live ammunition. I've seen people walking around with empty weapons in really appalling situations because fear of a negligent discharge or accidental shooting has overridden common sense.

As an aside, a diplomat being in charge of the rules of engagement is another reason I'd want nothing to do with securing embassies.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have to imagine a lot of embassy defense strategy is based on the softer element, intelligence gathering to prevent incident, rather than physical deterrent.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I should think so. I'm talking more about once that's passed and it has to be physically defended.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That's when you open the Jason Bourne vault and he wipes the floor with the pussy-ass protesters.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I'm thinking this would have gone differently with three words: "front toward enemy".

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

You can't use claymores near a building without willing to accept structural damage to what you are trying to protect.

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Raell Kromwell

Raell, directional damage is what Claymores are all about. You have to be careful with how you plant them, but they generally don't damage what is behind them.

What DE said about securing embassies . . . yeah, I've talked with a couple former Marines who've pulled that duty. Both said in an intelligent assault on an embassy, you take the guards out before anyone else. Luckily, the terrorists usually aren't all that intelligent.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Claymores are directional weapons, but it's still basically an explosive device. They do have a considerable rear danger area.



As you can see from the above diagram, there is a serious rear hazard for 18 meters (around 55 feet) and a much larger secondary rear danger area for 100 meters.



The guards are also probably not willing to comply with this plan. It's not merely a matter of being smart enough to know to take out the guards; it's a matter of having the skills and resources to come up with a feasbile plan for actually doing so.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I have used claymores before. I have seen the amount of damage they can do.

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Raell Kromwell

NSFW

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"Life isn't divided into genres. It's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky."
— Alan Moore

Great satire there.

Ok, that was super funny Fester

More damage to the mob than to the buildings and in a situation where you're being flooded by people trying to kill you, I'll take some cracks in concrete over the alternative.

Unless the embassy is a really cramped space with no drive up I can't see a few strategically placed claymores being a bad thing.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Awesome! I'm not quite so sanguine about the potential response of some Hindus though. Religious violence/riots by Hindu mobs in India isn't exactly unheard of.