Thursday, April 23, 2015

The Only Strategic Deterrence of Tyranny We Possess: Six Years Later & The Origin of the One Hundred Heads.

Sir,
I have read you on the internet and believe in what your doing. One day the ATF will come to count coup on you and take your head. I promise to take One hundred heads for yours.  -- Cheyenne 0317/8541
Dateline, Sequoyah's Cabin Historic Site parking lot, Sallisaw, OK, 21 April 2015:
In my experience, the concept of One Hundred Heads began with this note above, received in my post office box not long after I started Sipsey Street Irregulars. I later explained the larger concept of One Hundred Heads and the mathematics of liberty in the 21st Century here.
I was telling this story of my anonymous Marine scout-sniper benefactor to Dean Weingarten at the NRA annual meeting recently and he observed that the man must be a Kipling fan. "Kipling?" I asked. Dean then told me of this poem: The Grave of the Hundred Head which was first published in The Week’s News on 7 January 1888.
The Grave of the
Hundred Head




There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.


A Snider squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face—
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race—
They made a samadh in his honor,
A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state,
With fifty file of Burmans
To open him Heaven's gate.

The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay—
A jingal covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar's flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village -
The village of Pabengmay,
And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below—
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris -
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man's head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

I was embarrassed to realize that for all the Kipling I had read, I didn't recall this work, that I had never put two and two together.  "Makes sense, I guess," I observed.  "The man's a Marine, a soldier, and likely would have been stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Kipling's just the sort of poet a guy like that would read."

I have never said much about where, specifically, the note came from.  I destroyed the original and kept a xerox of it in order to keep any potential forensic tests being done on it in the aftermath of a raid on my archives.  But at the distance of six years, I don't think I'm giving up much to tell you that it was postmarked Sallisaw, Oklahoma, right where I'm writing this today.

As an adopted son of Alabama, I couldn't travel back home from my speech in Colorado without stopping by for a pilgrimage to the cabin of Sequoyah.

Sequoyah, for those who do not know, was the Cherokee genius who invented the written form of the Cherokee language. In a nod to both Cheyenne 0317/8541 and Charlie Quintard, I had to stop, if for no other reason than to recover my muse on Absolved and attempt to banish once again Churchill's black dog to I can finish the damn thing. It was also a recognition, after my trip to Colorado reinforced in me the same realization that the original card had generated, that the concept of One Hundred Heads as enunciated by Cheyenne 0317/8541 was the purest form of Fourth Generation Warfare in an American context. It is, in fact, the only strategic deterrence of tyranny we possess. As I wrote in Tyrants beware. 4th Generation Warfare: How the next civil war will be fought.
 
 “Direct military operations” are precisely what the 4GW insurgent seeks to avoid. His target is the mind and the will of the political leadership of his enemy -- to be specific, the few inches between their ears which are filled with brains to be influenced or, if not, popped like a grape with an unanswerable rifle shot from distance as an example to the others.

Let us make an example of the difference by briefly war-gaming the American Revolution using present-day 4GW tactics.


David Bushnell's Turtle

Early in the war, the following incidents occur:

Benjamin Franklin arranges a coordinated attack by David Bushnell in his submersible and John Paul Jones in the Ranger on English commercial shipping in the Thames estuary -- right at the King‘s doorstep in full view of horrified Englishmen who never thought the war would come there. Bushnell has greater success against the commercial shipping because their wooden hulls are not copper-sheathed as are British military hulls. This “infernal device” which strikes without warning or even apparent effective countermeasure frightens British shippers. Bushnell, John Paul Jones and his surviving crew are taken prisoner, but the very destructive raid, which also sets a large portion of the London docks ablaze, is just as stunning, if not more so, than the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942.

The Ranger


Meanwhile, Franklin dispatches a trio of riflemen by way of a neutral port into London. One fine day, when Lord North emerges from his country estate, he is killed by an aimed shot from 300 yards away. His wife, standing next to him, is unharmed. (NOTE: Lord North is targeted, but not the King. Under 4GW rules the King would be sacrosanct, just as an American President in the 21st Century would be. Anyone around them, however, would be fair 4GW targets if involved in the decisions or operations which oppress their own people. Remember, the point of 4GW is to destroy the will of the enemy elite to proceed with the war, not give them motivation to win, or provide them a propaganda coup to use with the people.) After North is replaced, the replacement King‘s minister is shot as well in identical circumstances.

Simultaneously, Franklin activates a third group already living quietly in England to attack by arson the buildings of the British East India Company, Lloyds of London and the Company of the Bank of England. They do this at night so there are no civilian casualties, although several adjoining structures are inevitably destroyed as well.

The attacks by John Paul Jones and Bushnell are (barely) within the rules of war and Franklin takes credit for them. The others are plausibly deniable. British merchants and politicians get the point, however. This war against the American revolutionaries is going to cost them far more than they ever dreamed. How long would they have supported the King’s North American obsession when they were cumulatively losing hundreds of thousands of English pounds daily?

 Or, in a modern American context, as I also wrote in 2009:
I have asked this question before. They will fight to the last ATF agent or to the last oath-breaking soldier. Will they fight to the first senior bureaucrat, the second Congressman, the third newspaper editor, the fourth Senator, the fifth White House aide? Can they stand Bill Clinton's rules of engagement?
Indeed, can they stand experiencing One Hundred Heads? I think not. The reaction of the Connecticut authorities to my posting of the names, home addresses and contact information of those who voted for the Intolerable Act tells me that people who like to put us on lists are made distinctly uncomfortable by being put on lists themselves, even if they are the ones responsible for putting their own names upon it.
So, today, as I write this from the home ground of Cheyenne 0317/8541, I have this hope -- That our enemies, those domestic enemies of the Constitution who seek to rob us of our liberty and property even if it is the at the cost of our lives, recognize that One Hundred Heads is a very real prospect for them and may well cost them their lives. Only thereby can we avoid another American civil war -- a Fourth Generation civil war -- that targets their minds and their will to carry it out. For the anonymous, unfindable Cheyenne 0317/8541's of this country will make certain that the war makers and tyrannical decision takers pay the price of their folly.
One Hundred Heads Life and Casualty Company, indeed.

11 comments:

Chiu ChunLing said...

I have to say, there is something in me that appreciates the elegance of fighting a war with a minimum of bloodshed.

And yet, I sense that this conflict must not be settled on any other basis but the total destruction of all who are not fully committed to the principles of freedom. Not that it could not be resolved temporarily on favorable terms without such great loss of life, but that this time must serve as a lasting lesson to those who would trade away liberty for security in the expectation that better men would save them from the full consequences of their cowardice.

Put more simply, the people themselves must choose to be free, whatever the cost. And that choice cannot be valid if freedom is the safest choice...for anyone. It took less than a century after the first founding for the initial toleration of slavery to tear apart the principles of freedom. It is a simple truth that America cannot endure half-slave and half-free.

"The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free." Period. Full stop. No 'if' 'and' 'or' 'but's about it. And no "unless".

The part of me which wants to preserve those who willingly choose slavery...is the part of me that's okay with owning a few slaves. I won't deny it. But, in the end, I won't serve it either. If America can be made a land fit for free men without eliminating all who choose to live as slaves, I shall be well content to let them serve me, and do my best to treat them well in return. But if I have to choose between having slaves to serve me, and being free myself...I cannot do otherwise than choose freedom.

Sorry, slaves. Your continued enslavement, even to me, is not worth losing my own freedom.

Live free or die.

Anonymous said...

The choice is yours, policy makers.

CowboyDan said...

Mike, I think a lot of what you write deserves a wider audience than you currently are able to reach.

I forwarded this piece to myself, and I plan to share it with some of the more politically aware people I know.

For your own reasons, you are not on Facebook. That's probably a wise choice on your part. Do you have any objection to my sharing your work there? I'll check back here before I post it there. I value your wisdom and your opinions. If you don't want FB to have your work, I won't post it there.

Have a great day. Stay safe.

Dutchman6 said...

Please forward this to FB and any other venue you think might be appropriate. Heck, send it to your local politician/tyrant-wannabe or ideologue/propagandist direct, for all I care. The more the word gets out, the better.

Anonymous said...

Got me t-shirt!

I intend to wear to a meeting of Patriots this week along with copies/handouts of what it means as explained herein.

Death before slavery!

Allen said...

The only problem with the American Revolution scenario you paint here is that a significant portion of the elite, the Whigs, were already in favor of American independence; General Howe was a Whig member of parliament and did not pursue Washington's forces with particular vigor or cunning. An attack on England could just as easily have strengthened the Tory position. 4GW attacks the moral weakness of the enemy; as the Boer wars showed later on, the English were fully capable of successfully using scorched-earth tactics against an opponent that had no advocates in Parliament.

Steve Miller said...

As far as I can tell David Bushnell's turtle was only used in New York Harbor? Hate to sound like a school teacher with a ruler in my hand but I was skeptical about such a craft making it across the Atlantic. It seems it did not?

Anonymous said...

Live Free or Die,
Well said.

A Fellow LFoD person

Anonymous said...

Steve Miller....

I think that was just poor sentence structure in the article.

I read it as the Ranger went to the Thames.....not the submersible.

Anonymous said...

Based on the info I can find, Lord North died of failing health in 1792, 2 years after Franklin himself died in 1790, and nearly 10y after the revolution completed. Am I missing something?

Dúnadan said...

To those wondering about David Bushnell's 'Turtle' being capable of trans-Atlantic travel or Lord North's survival after the successful attempt on his life during the Revolution:

Mike wrote this as a hypothetical take on the American Revolution, had 4GW tactics been used. None of this actually happened, as he explained in the preamble to his post.