B,,,Not Us

 

Surrealism / Sidney Nolan/ Desert Storm

Tell you the truth, dragging my ass out of bed is getting harder.  Less than seven months to go, but I think that I got this.  I am certain that the coffee will take hold soon and I will get the necessary “up and at ‘em” but right now that seems elusive.

Just received my last copy of Foreign Affairs.  Praise be.  It has been harder and harder to read this nonsense over the last while.  The decline began at the fall of the Soviet Union and has been a steady decline, lubricated by hubris, the entire time.

The cover shows yet another view of a dystopian hellscape of running children and smoking craters.  The headline is simply “Who Won the War on Terror?”

Assholes.

Well buckaroos, if a war on a tactic (which this wasn’t) or even if it was yet another crusade trying to insert an “Outre-Mer” into the heart of Islam, or even if it was a thought out attempt to execute on McKinder’s rabid fantasies, the answer is:

“Certainly Not the USA”

I have yet to understand as an old soldier why we think of ourselves as a nation of warriors.  We just aren’t.  We want things but our heritage as a nation of shopkeepers is all too willing to go to war and not really willing to fight one.  Victories here in the USA are thought to be purchased.  What is happening now is that people are squeaking about the money wasted in making the foolish attempt, not the foolish attempt itself.  We appear to be mostly angry about the lost money.  We could give a fuck less about the war itself.

I still am a fan of isolation.  Treaties with Canada and Mexico.  Navy reduced to a Coast Guard.  Air Force can keep their missiles and the tactical aircraft, Army reduced to 24 brigades.  Marines going back to seagoing bellhops.

Spend our time climbing out of the hole we have dug ourselves.

Mind our own business.