The Conservative Cat

What I'm pointing out here is not that one way is better than the other, but rather that there are two ways to combat something. The fisherman is the champion of the other side, the paladin as it were. He's the force for good, the shining example of what we should be. I can't think of a good example of this off hand, but the big thing about him is that he's different than the fish. He doesn't think like a fish, he doesn't have a fish's habits, and there are things that the fish can do that he can't (breathe underwater, for example). The fisherman has rules he must follow, lines he can't cross, and above all, he can not reel in a fish until it's bitten down on his hook.

The bigger fish doesn't have those problems. He has no lines to worry about, no limits to stop him, and he can attack whenever he likes. A prime example of the bigger fish is Riddick from the Chronicles of Riddick movies. He is by no stretch of the phrase a "good guy." If you give him half a reason he will kill you, and that's partly how he's managed to stay alive as long as he has. He survives by being better at killing people than the people who are trying to kill him. That's the bigger fish, he's the better killer, the bigger monster, the darker assassin. He strikes when he likes, how he likes. He thinks like a fish, has the fish's habits, and he survives by finding ways to use those habits against other fish.

To put this into a modern context, in Iraq Saddam was the bigger fish, and his methods were very effective. He ruled over a period of general peace and there wasn't any civil unrest to speak of. He did it by killing anyone he saw as a threat, and most of the time he didn't stop with just one person. If someone did something he didn't like Saddam was perfectly willing to kill off that persons entire family. He was not above using rape, murder, torture and dismemberment as deterrents. He is a ruthless heartless killer, but he gets results.

The left claims that simply by being in Iraq we've become the bigger fish. They claim we're worse than Saddam. It's true that since Saddam was removed crime in Iraq has gone up, and incidents of violence have escalated, but the torture chambers have closed, and the government sponsored genocide has stopped.

No one ever said change was going to be easy, just worth it.

This has been a really deep thought by Peg-Eye Nate. Thank you for your support.