The old man with his gun: A fable

Hypothetical:

You live alone in a quiet suburban neighborhood. You are not rich, by any means, but you manage to have the resources to get by from paycheck to paycheck. You have few friends and live mostly alone except for your small dog and your beloved rose-garden.

One night, with little advance warning, an old man who lives down the block has his house attacked by some teenage punks. They take a baseball bat to his mailbox, TP his house, throw eggs on his car, and generally make a mess of his place.

You feel badly for the old man, and the whole neighborhood offers up their condolences on the senseless destruction the violent young punks did to his home, and offer their support.

The old man is very rich. He’s spent a lifetime engaged in some fairly shady business dealings, worked with acquisitions and mergers, and took the fifteen million dollar buyout package when he resigned as the CEO of his company. Instead of using his money and resources to fix his home and replace his damaged goods, the rich old man buys a Kevlar vest decides to purchase a gun.

For the first few nights, he sat alone in his house, peering out of the windows and pointing the barrel of his gun at anything that moved. When the punks didn’t come back, though, he took to the streets. Not knowing where the punks were seemed to be driving the old fellow mad, and he forced his way into other neighborhood residents’ houses, rifled through their belongings, damaged their stuff, and when they complained, he pointed the gun at them until they ‘decided’ to cooperate and assist him in his search.

Finally one afternoon, the old man with his gun walks up your driveway. You didn’t invite him onto your land, and you’ve heard the bad stories about him from other neighbors. You tell him to leave, but he waves the gun at you and reminds you that you agreed to support him right after the punks vandalized his house.

As you try to again tell him to leave your lawn, the old man sees a rustling in your rose bushes on one side of the house. "It’s the vandals!" the old man screams. As you see him pulling out his gun, you yell at him that it is only your beloved dog and that he needs to stop this crazy chase.

BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! The old man, ignoring your words, fires into the prized rose bushes and shoots your pet. Your pet, never having suspected his imminent demise, lays dead behind the bush. The old man tramples the rose bush as he attempts to retrieve the corpse of the ‘punk’ he feared so much.

Holding your dog, and recognizing his mistake, the old man, still holding the gun, remarks that he is sorry that your pet had to die, but that he couldn’t take the chance that his gut instinct about the house-vandals in the bushes was wrong. He reminds you that if he’d been right, he might have just saved your house from being similarly attacked, and tells you that if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.

In a possibly related story, the United States bombed a village in northern Pakistan, believing a member of al-Qaeda was hiding there, despite Pakistani intelligence officials denying such a claim in advance. Eighteen civilians died, including 5 women and 5 children.

The words of Trent Lott: "I would have a problem if we didn’t do it."

The words of John McCain: "It’s terrible when innocent people are killed; we regret that. But we have to do what we think is necessary to take out al-Qaeda, particularly the top operatives... We regret it. We understand the anger that people feel, but the United States’ priorities are to get rid of al-Qaeda, and this was an effort to do so... We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again."