…and by necessity, a smidgin of politics too.

All during my lifetime, wars have been started by US Presidents without the auspices of being officially “declared” wars – ie: conflict(s), police action(s), you name your own descriptive noun to be placed here, etc. There are numerous stated reasons to begin the conflict, usually involving our national honor, national security or some other seemingly honorable endeavor involving the interest of another sovreign nation, usually an ally. After things start to get rolling, members of Congress start to place highly restrictive “rules of engagement” so as to virtually ensure that the stated objectives are unobtainable. The stated reasons for these “rules” are so that we present an “honorable” or “civil” appearance to the rest of the world to maintain “the higher ground”. The result is that our servicemen’s hands are tied substantially and we’re lucky just to avoid getting killed en masse. Any victorys we achieve under these circumstances are quite remarkable.

Every enemy we have encountered does not subscribe to any “rules” to conduct their side of the war and consequently, there is some truth to the proproganda they are told as to how weak we are. To then have our political leaders announce publicly to the world that our present conflict is not being done well, or it’s all a lost cause or anything of that ilk so as to give the impression that we will shortly be backing out and leaving is just the last straw of making sure that all of the US military lives lost have all died in vain.

So it was with Vietnam, so too now with Iraq. We, as a nation, MUST learn to get into war much more slowly, measure the consequences of action and/or inaction much more carefully and only act if ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. If we DO act, then it must be swift, decisive and no holds barred.

That’s all that I can give at the moment. I’ll have to take a break to clear my head. It would seem that each time I sit down to this blog, I have a very clear idea of what I want to say, but somewhere in the middle of doing it, thousands of conflicting thoughts start surfacing all screaming to get out at once. It must be cathartic in some way; maybe THAT’s why I am doing this. Thanks! Later…