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.