Sometimes the monstrous ironies of the world set me to thinking.

For instance, weighing stories like this one:

Friends and family are rallying around the seven Marines and a Navy medic charged with killing an Iraqi civilian, setting up Web sites to raise money and draw attention to what they claim is an unfair prosecution.

The troops are charged with premeditated murder and could face the death penalty if convicted. Supporters are scrambling to raise tens of thousands of dollars to pay defense attorneys.

Caldwell declined to describe the condition of the soldiers' bodies, saying it would be "inappropriate until I know what the families were told." He said it was clear that the soldiers had died of wounds suffered in captivity, rather than at the site of the attack on the checkpoint, but that the cause of death could not be immediately determined.

According to residents of Yusufiya and a relative of one of the victims, the soldiers were beheaded. An Iraqi official said they had been brutally tortured before their death, but provided no further details.

And more...:

"We announce the good news to our Islamic nation that we executed God's will and slaughtered the two crusader animals we had in captivity," said the claim, reportedly from the Mujahedeen Shura Council, a group linked to al Qaeda.

Seven people were arrested Thursday in connection with the early stages of a plot to attack Chicago's Sears Tower and other buildings in the U.S., including the FBI office here, a federal law enforcement official said.

As part of the raids related to the arrests, FBI agents swarmed a warehouse in Miami's Liberty City area, using a blowtorch to take off a metal door. One neighbor said the suspects had been sleeping in the warehouse while running what seemed to be a "military boot camp."

The men slept in the warehouse, said Tashawn Rose, 29. "They would come out late at night and exercise. It seemed like a military boot camp that they were working on there. They would come out and stand guard."

She talked to one of the men about a month ago: "They seemed brainwashed. They said they had given their lives to Allah."

The irony makes me wonder about several things:

A) Would it not be wise to ensure that Islamic culture never gains a foothold in the United States? The culture is highly problematic because at its root is a religion based on a book which is depraved.

[2.191] And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.

The founder of the religion set quite an example as well. Mohammed accomplished many good deeds in terms of establishing social order in Arabia, and instituting a unifying religious system in a culture that was historically rife with conflict, but he also committed - and justified - murder, kidnapping and rape. This is the founder, mind you. A majority or plurality of Muslims at any given time might be "peaceful," but to call Islam a religion of peace is hogwash.

Is it reasonable, then, to suggest we don't want a single solitary trace of it in our country? I think so.

To begin with, a national referendum should be held to allow American citizens to vote on Amendment to the U.S. Constitution number 28:

1. After one year from the ratification of this article the practice or promotion of the ideology known as Islam in the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof is hereby prohibited.

2. The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

3. This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Next, I suggest all Muslims in the U.S. be invited to self-deport. As we have established, a fine welcome awaits each of them in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Finally, I suggest every mosque and Muslim center in the U.S. be siezed immediately via eminent domain and ownership transferred to a local gourmet foods purveyor, specializing in all types of fine comestibles, ranging from Italian prosciutto to Canadian bacon to an international array of wine and beer to a full range of kosher products, which will yield far greater tax revenue for the municipality. If the building is outside of town or unpromising for retail, turn it into a dog shelter or a strip club (with 72 dancers, natch).

B) What does it take for Americans to get mad? I mean, really mad as opposed to incidentally annoyed: angry with a clear, persistent goal in mind. Our most immediate enemies are attempting to impose a retrograde society. If America is still a shining city on the hill, our enemies are trying to exploit our passivity and inertia, and fertilize the weeds which grow up from within the cracks. They want a jungle to overtake our city. Will we let that happen, or will we fight back angrily, irrationally, as though our families' lives are at stake?

There are a few hundred million of us. Are we willing to fight to keep this city or are we content to hide within our homes and watch television while the jungle encroaches?

C) On the question of the way our military forces are allowed to operate and our philosophy of war, I wonder if we even have the concept that war is war. We haven't been around as a nation very long in the grand scheme of history, and while our rules have earned innumerable genuflects for the past century or two, has it been established that they work in all cases? Is there a point where you have to say: It doesn't matter if we're "better" than them, because we still have to win.

After watching the early portions of the Iraq war and seeing our troops killed because the rules of engagement favored the irregulars on the other side who were perfectly willing to pose as civilians or hide amongst civilians, and then the instances such as Fallujah where the goons also seemed to have the upper hand, I got to thinking: Can't this 'hearts and minds' business be taken too far?

That's about how I'm thinking today. I don't care if these pathetic, imbecilic, dark-ages culture, fourth-world mutants get a fair shot at self-government. I have never been clear on the fact that they even deserve or can handle self-government. My initial expectation was, the U.S. would take out Saddam and steamroll his regime, then set up a good dictator (for us) who would keep everything under control and allow us to maintain a massive forward base to keep killing Muslim terrorists and dropping huge amounts of ordinance on countries that shelter them.

The democracy prospect? Sure, leave that door open. But the war is about U.S. security, not opening the gates of all the cages and turning the zoo grounds into a major cluster-fuck.

Any critique of U.S. military tactics must acknowledge that the U.S. military is under civilian control and, like all people, civilians can be idiots. In fact, Americans as a rule can be totally blithe idiots because we have it so good. So when I criticize how military operations are conducted, please bear in mind I am criticizing all of us, because we as citizens ultimately control who calls the shots and which shots get called. And I realize: Our ability to respond to threats is limited by the will of the citizenry. Countries without such limits seem to have an advantage.

So when I see videos of people getting their heads sawed off, or read about elderly, female aid workers found disembowled, or read about soldiers having their eyes gouged out and genitals cut off and stuffed in their own mouths before being beheaded, I often wonder: What Would The Fucking Chinese Do?

I'll admit, I don't know that much about the Chinese, which is why I call them the "fucking Chinese," because they are kind of scary and exotic, and they strike me as very effective. But I have the sense they are ruthless. I picture China's leadership as the moral equivalent of a 1970's-era motorcycle gang like the Hells Angels or the Outlaws with a big-ass, rich modern state as their home turf. Or like Genghis Khan and his accompanying hordes with all the resources of U.S. Naval Base Guam.

The beauty of the Chinese is they don't just let certain countries fight certain battles for them: They let ALL the other countries fight ALL the battles. In business parlance, the Chinese reinvest. While I don't know much about how the Chinese would handle a situation such as Iraq, I can speculate.

I think they'd be really, really brutal. I think the answer to What Would The Fucking Chinese Do is, they would rain down hell until the problem went away.

They harvest body parts from prisoners, for god's sake. My guess is, if the Chinese were faced with a situation like the U.S. now has in Baghdad, they would employ the Daisy Cutter Your Block tactic. When someone kills a Chinese soldier, the Chinese disintegrate a block. If attacks continue, they evaporate another block. Keep bombing, and eventually the locals will have a strong desire to root out the bad guys from within their midst.

Cultures that mutilate people in the name of religion don't get the protections provided by the Geneva Convention. They get clobbered. They get bombed from above and raided from below. And they get pain widely distributed. The U.S. should be tripling the number of troops in Itaq, breaking down doors, and vaporizing trouble spots. The Iraqi people would quickly catch on and kill the terrorists themselves.

I think wars are fought to win, not for democracy for the locals. The Chinese would likely be on board with that.