As a veteran of one war, I can see similarities in how we are conducting this war.  We’re really doing nothing different that what we did in Vietnam.  We have developed and use the same formula in every major conflict since the end of World War II.

Here is the US formula for the cycle of war in 14 easy steps.

1.  Begin by telling the American people a pretext for involvement.  Mainly appeal to the themes that Americans can relate to.  We want to assist a peoples’ plight from oppression, people who are dying to be free, to have democracy, to have human rights, to have equality, to live life in the pursuit of happiness.  In this case, we were attacked.

2.  Find a puppet we can install to put in charge so the world won’t think we’re the outright aggressors.

3.  Begin to fight the insurgents by supplying arms to the puppet government.  Funny, we call them the insurgents, but in reality we’re supporting the real insurgents, the puppet government only a few of the citizens support.

4.  We send advisory personnel there to “train” the army of the puppet government and prop them up.

5.  Things don’t go as planned, and begin to get out of hand, so we sent a few thousand troops over there to support the failing army.

6.  Things continue to go against us, as the army we supposedly trained can’t tie their own shoelaces without us.

7.  So, we escalate. We send tens of thousands of troops over there, since we want to protect the ones already there, stabilize the puppet government, so we can make a hero’s exit and leave behind a solid democracy.  Overwhelm them with sheer numbers.

8.  We bomb the bejesus out of the “enemy”, who in reality the population supports, killing thousands of innocent civilians in the process.  Funny, it doesn’t seem to be doing any good, so we drop more bombs.

9.  Finally, things begin to falter and we get war weary, the citizens back home are restless, more and more troops are coming home in bodybags.

10.  We finally see the futility of our actions and begin to pull out, completing the task in a couple of years so as to evacuate our personnel safely.

11.  The “enemy” then fills the vacuum we created by pulling out, and begins to disembowel the army we armed and trained, allegedly, and the country begins to disintegrate.

12.  Out of guilt, we evacuate the puppet government and its leaders, since if they stay, they will face a firing squad.  We fly them to Paris so they can live a life in exile in semi luxury, at least the puppet heads.

13.  Thousands of our soldiers are not so lucky.  Many come back in bodybags; others wounded, physically and mentally, and the government turns their backs on them, making them fend for themselves.

14. We lay low for 25-30 years, then begin to look around again.  Hmmm, let’s see who’s getting oppressed…….

And all the while, we took the lives of thousands of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, giving them the very treatment we said the “enemy” was doing in the first place.

And the MIC makes huge profits while thousands of families cope with their loss.

That’s how it was and this is how this conflict will end.  When will we ever learn, and stop waving our dicks?

The military, for a number of years, had a draft.  It was done away with in the 1970s and there has been an all voluntary military ever since.  I think it is time we go back and re-institute the draft, especially in light of our participation in two simlutaneous wars, and military personnel are becoming more scarce.

But here is where the military has gotten it wrong, for so many years.

I am a Vietnam Vet, am 61 years old, and the military thinks I’m too old to track down, and go after, terrorists.  The maximum age one can be to join the military is 42, and I’m 19 years too old.  But, I maintain that they have it ass backwards.

Instead of sending 18 year olds to fight , they ought to draft us old guys and make those of us who have already served re-up, and also get those guys who weaseled their way out of the Vietnam War the first time, this time.  Let’s not even draft anyone until he’s 35 years old.  Here is my thinking:

First of all, researchers say 18 year olds think about sex every 10 seconds or so.  We old timers only think about sex a couple of times a week, leaving us almost 30,000 more seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier.  There is much for the older guy to be grouchy about – achy back, knees and neck; trouble sleeping; always tired, etc.  Older guys are more impatient and maybe letting us kill some terrorist asshole will make us feel better and shut us up for a little while.

An 18 year old doesn’t like to get up before 11 a.m.  Old guys always get up early to take a piss, so since we’re up anyway, we might as well be up killing some fanatical religious zealots while we’re at it.

If we got captured, we would be reliable in not spilling the beans because we would forget where we put them.  Just remembering name, rank and serial number would be a real challenge for us.

Basic training, better known as boot camp, would be much easier for us old guys.  We’re used to getting cussed out and yelled at and we’re also used to eating soft food like C-rations.  Over the years, we’ve also developed an appreciation for guns.  We’ve been using them as excuses to get out of the house and away from the cursing and yelling.  They could go easier on the obstacle course, however.  In all my time in Vietnam, I never had to climb over a 20 foot wall with a rope hanging from it, nor did I do any pushups after a firefight.  Now that I think of it, running was kind of a waste of energy, too, for I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet or oncoming shrapnel.

An 18 year old has his whole life ahead of him; he’s still learning to shave, talk to a pretty girl, probably never had sex, and he still hasn’t figured out that the brim of a baseball cap is to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.  All these things are good reasons why we should keep them at home and let them learn a little more about life before sending them into harm’s way.  With us gone, they’ll have more access to horny cougars, too, and really learn how to do it right instead of fumbling around with an equally inexperienced girl.

So, let us old guys track down those dirty, cowardly, bastard terrorists.  The last thing they want to deal with is a bunch of pissed off old fogies with attitudes and automatic weapons who already know their best years are behind them and don’t have much more time to live anyway.

Finally, why not also draft women over 50, provided they are in menopause??  You think old men have attitudes?!?  Oh, my God !!  You can put them on guard duty, and we old farts might get a good night’s sleep, for a change.

This was actually an article in a local paper about a historian and Middle East expert spreaking at the University of Montana. It was neat to see such an interesting read in the local paper.

Anyway, here is a link to the article.

I love the neocons who like to spout this nonsense that we brought “democracy” to Iraq … as if that gives more meaning to the deaths of 4,000 Americans and perhaps 500,000 Iraqis. I get so mad when I hear that.

Partly because, the neocons’ story has changed, first of all. I’m old enough to remember that the whole point of the war supposedly to begin with was to get Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction.” When that didn’t pan out (gosh, you mean some of that intelligence was twisted and exaggerated?), then the meme turned into, “well we liberated Iraq from Saddam.”

The historian, Dr. Juan Cole from the University of Michigan, points out “there are no political campaigns because “the candidate would be killed” and no campaign offices because “they would be bombed.

“In fact, Juan Cole told an audience of educators and students on Monday afternoon, only the presence of the U.S. military has kept the very brief experiment in Iraqi democracy from turning into a bloodbath.”

Cole is very pessimistic that a democracy will survive in Iraq, at least peacefully. The massive bombings there this week continue to illustrate American sacrifices have not helped to create a stable country.

Does this sound like “liberation” to you? Whenever I hear, that “we brought democracy to Iraq,” it gets my blood boiling. Is this the neocons’ idea of “democracy?” Was this really worth the death of more than 4,000 Americans and perhaps 500,000 Iraqis?

What I find so weak about the “exporting democracy” argument is, if that was our true intent in Iraq, then why don’t we invade pretty much the entire continent of Africa? I’d say Africa is desperately in need of some democracy. How about Myanmar? Or CHINA? This isn’t about exporting democracy. And it never was. Just another dishonest neocon meme.

However, any mistake in mere expression or arrangement is excusable; but when you come to fancy geography, differing from the other not by miles or leagues, but by whole days’ journeys, where is the classical model for that? One writer has taken so little trouble with his facts–never met a Syrian, I suppose, nor listened to the stray information you may pick up at the barber’s–, that he thus locates Europus:–’Europus lies in Mesopotamia, two days’ journey from the Euphrates, and is a colony from Edessa.’ Not content with that, this enterprising person has in the same book taken up my native Samosata and shifted it, citadel, walls, and all, into Mesopotamia, giving it the two rivers for boundaries, and making them shave past it, all but touching the walls on either side. I suspect you would laugh at me, Philo, if I were to set about convincing you that I am neither Parthian nor Mesopotamian, as this whimsical colony-planter makes me.

- paragraph 24 from How To Write History by Lucian
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