"Jane" is loyal listener going way back. She wanted me to repost this from about 11 years ago.
It comes from another listtener known only as "Troybill".
Having served in the middle east this seemed to strike home with me. It was sent to me today by an old friend.
Now, the news media will spend days trying to determine why these men did what they did in Boston. They will want to know what America did to make these brothers so angry with us. They will want to know why these men were not arrested before they did something unlawful. The media will be in a tissy about the new era of home grown radicals and about how they could live among us and still hate us.
Here in Oklahoma, I have rattlesnakes on my place. I have killed a rattlesnake on the front porch. I have killed a rattlesnake on the back porch. I have killed rattlesnakes in the barn, in the shop and on the driveway. I kill every rattlesnake I encounter. I kill rattlesnakes because a rattlesnake will bite me and inflict me with poison. I don’t stop to wonder why a rattlesnake will bite me. It will bite me because it is a rattlesnake and that is what rattlesnakes do. I don’t try to reason with a rattlesnake…I just kill it. I don’t try to get to know the rattlesnake better so that I can find a way to live with the rattlesnakes and convince them not to bite me…I just kill them.
I don’t quiz a rattlesnake to see it I can find out where the other snakes are because (a) it won’t tell me (b) I already know that they live on my place… I just kill the rattlesnake and move on to the next one. I don’t look for ways that I might be able to change the rattlesnake to a non poison rat snake. I just kill it. Oh, and on occasion I kill a rat snake, because I thought it was a rattlesnake at the time. Also, I know that for every rattlesnake that I kill, two more lurk out there. In my lifetime I will never be able to rid my place of rattlesnakes. Do I fear them? No! Do I respect what they can do to me? Yes! And because of that respect I give them their fair justice….I kill them.
Maybe as a country, we should give more credit to the jihadist just being a rattlesnake! Just like the rattlesnake the only good jihadist is a dead jihadist. When I see one on my porch, in my barn or wherever I will kill it…..I hope you will do the same.