Not that I should care. Hell, I’m over the hill. The only time they want to see me in my uniform is at the parade on Veteran’s Day. That way, they can make war feel honorable by displaying the old slugs who survived it. Like me, wearing khakis I bought at K-mart, and boots I got at Lester’s Gun Shop.
Hey, I’m not belittling the guys in uniform, or dishonoring the boys who served and got shot up, or even gainsay the need for troops to protect America’s shores.
Just the opposite.
I believe, at the right times, all those military machinations are not only desirable, but necessary. My bitch is not with war (when absolutely necessary) but with military déjà vu; chewing our cabbage twice; play it again, Sam; and other idiotic instances of fighting the same enemy over again.
What’s wrong, with our idiot adversaries? When they’re defeated, why don’t they have the brains to lay down and die? Haven’t they seen any war movies? Don’t they know that rolling over is the scripted thing to do?
Take Iraq. We mobilized thousands of men and tons of armaments to rescue Kuwait from incursion by Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical grasp, but instead of marching into Baghdad and finishing the job (as some generals advised Bush One to do) we pulled back, slapped each other on the rump, and declared victory.
Some victory.
That kind of no-win skirmish is what made necessary the march back to the snake pit that we’ll be going back into all too soon.
Proof of that couldn’t be clearer. There are 300,000 American troops, modernized artillery batteries, several aircraft carriers with their battle groups, and much more, all standing by, waiting for Bush Two to blow the whistle.
Barring a breakthrough peace initiative, we will fight this damned Iraqi war all over again. And this time, Lord help us, with probably more than a token number of body bags coming home.
Ye Gods, Mister President, if we insist on playing in a manure pile could we squash the fly this time instead of just tearing off its wings? Repeat performances are getting a bit stale down here where the ordinary people live.
Then, of course, there’s North Korea. If memory serves, we went around the maypole with that nasty bunch back in ’51 to ’53 This was another of those unnecessary wars to stop communism and promote democracy.
Yeah, sure, promote democracy in a land of peasants, caribou, and rice fields. The only thing we got for our effort in that fiasco was 110,000 American casualties, and a lot of new enemies.
Since we decided to divvy up Korea at the 38th parallel, we are now being threatened again by North Korea. And last I heard from Washington was that this smidgeon of Asian land held a point position in the Axis of Evil. So we probably will send over a few thousand fresh bodies to perform Act Two of the same war we fought in the fifties.
In fact, Rummy, bless his black heart, has just ordered a fleet of 24 U.S. long-range bombers to Guam, and you can bet they’re not there for the annual air show.
And as if that weren’t indicative enough of a “repeat” war, Ian Mather, Diplomatic Correspondent, tells us that the game of international brinkmanship North Korea is playing, has got American strategists weighing the option of a preemptive strike.
Just to get the first lick in, I presume.
But even the Pentagon has doubts that that will help. What with North Korea’s one-million-men-plus army, 8,000 artillery pieces, and an estimated 5,000 tons of deadly chemical and biological agents, our own government estimates that we could expect up to a million casualties in the first 24 hours of a war.
It’s like inflation, folks, the price you pay keeps going up each time around.
What seems apropos here is a word or two from Andrew Kennedy of the Royal United Services Institute in London, about the dicey situation in America “There are few good options available to the Bush administration North Korea has spent the last 50 years planning for this. The missiles are already in place, and the tunnels are already dug. All they have to do is pull the trigger.”
And in a final spurt of commonsense logic that the Bushers don’t seem to have in abundance these days, Kennedy closes by saying:: “You have two countries, North Korea and Iraq. One with nuclear weapons and one without. One that is contained and one that is not. Yet you invade the one that has no nuclear weapons and is already contained, and you do a deal and send aid to the other.”
Makes no sense, does it?
Maybe the thought of having to fight the same enemies twice has got the Washington war crowd a bit confused.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”