Ever Wonder

The older I get the "wiser" my elders have become. Even though some have passed on, I still marvel at the wisdom they had about Vietnam. For instance when I was younger and in the military I thought we should get involved in Vietnam. To me it was like playing football in high school. Why should you spend all the time practicing if you are not going to use it. Once we became involved and I matured a little more and observed the politics of war I started to realize that war is for the politicians not the generals. The last General I can think of that fought and won a war was U.S. Grant. He negotiated the terms of peace and respected his enemy. Since then it seems that all wars that ended by negotiations of the politicians has sooner or later resulted in a follow on war somewhere else, because no one really thought through the history or social conditions that may have precipitated the out break. I recall when recently we invaded Iraq I was starting to question in my own mind the reason we were doing it. Sure all the information indicated they had WMD's but I still felt there were better ways to deal with it. Granted Saddam was an a..hole, but there were better ways to handle that than with a big budget war. $3.50 worth of ammunition and a well disguised CIA agent could have done that task. How many times has Afghanistan been invaded with the same out come. Looks like we are going to follow history and get out with out accomplishing much except leaving a bunch of cronies in charge which sooner or later will be out of office at the hands of local feudal tribes. That's the way they like it, who are we to try and change it. So as the vets of this war will learn, there will be another one in the next generation to test the warriors. Man cannot practice football and never play the game. Thus is is with war.