Ruin and merciless hatred

I don't really have much to add to what all of you know. The Iranian "leadership" has proved nearly as stupid and impulsive as my own.

There really is no "win" here. The U.S. cannot possibly invade and occupy Iran in order to effect a dramatic change in the nation of Iran as it did in Germany and Japan after 1945. Iran cannot possibly force the United States to back down without the U.S. choosing to back down.

Instead there will simply be killing and maiming, destruction and chaos. In the end the combatants will remain, richer in nothing but ruin and merciless hatred.

You know I was a soldier. I cannot in good faith preach to anyone the virtues of pacifism.

But there are times and reasons when wars must be fought. Often those reasons are bad ones, and those times are never right. There never was, as Benjamin Franklin wrote, a good war or a bad peace.

But there are worse wars. Stupid, pointless, needless wars, and this is surely a very, very bad war, in that nothing good can ever come of the "peace" that will finally follow it.

I will say more tomorrow.

But for tonight, I will leave you with the rest of Doctor Franklin's quote for you to ponder as we wait uncertainly for the news that will come with the dawn.

"What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility. What an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads and other public works, edifices and improvements, rendering England a complete paradise, might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief! In bringing misery into thousands of families, and destroying the lives of so many thousands of working people who might have performed the useful labor."

Update 1/9/: Well, color me surprised. Both sides sorta-kinda walked this back from the abyss. The mullahs made it clear that all these missiles were warning shots, targeted to make big booms but not kill anyone. And Trumpy Bear, looking and sounding like a kid forced to eat his vegetables, produced a brief statement that made it clear that he was doing nothing to ratchet the tensions down. The punitive U.S. sanctions on Iran remain in place, "sanctions" that amount to a level of blockade that would be considered warfare if it were being done to the U.S. by another nations. The GIs aren't moving out of Iraq regardless of what the Iraqis may say. All the elements needed for an utterly weapons-grade-moron-level war are still there.

And, worse yet, in my opinion, the airwaves are full of the same fucking idiots - Bloody Bill Kristol, Hannity, Coulter, Rushbo, the loathsome Cheney and Trump spawn, pimping as hard for that moronic war as possible.

So we dodged that bullet. But these dumb fuckers are waving the gun around, and if it goes off and shoots my country in the foot I will be as shocked as when my kid announced that Cap'n Crunch abraded the roof of his mouth.

You're Welc...hunh?

Remember the time I told y'all about Facebook?

OK, well, there's a group on Facebook called "Thank A Soldier". It seems to be run by some nice, well, meaning people (from Canada, interestingly enough) who genuinely want to say nice things to squaddies.

A "friend" of mine on Facebook just joined this group, and, like everything you do on Facebook, a little note popped up on my page: "So-and-so just joined the group "Thank A Soldier".

I thought that was very nice of her, because I'm not sure what soldiers have done for her or hers lately, but every time I see that little pop-up I end up wandering over to that page and I read the first line of their blurb:

"We Believe in thanking soldiers for our freedoms we enjoy"

And every time I get a pain in the giggy. And every time I post a comment to Facebook that goes something like this:

"I served 22 years in the U.S. Army. I cannot in all honesty think of anything I did anywhere to anyone that contributed materially to the freedom anyone in the U.S. enjoys today or did at the time. I certainly served U.S. "interests", helped further U.S. geopolitical aims and did some things that helped people in other countries.

Every time you voted, Kelli, you did more for "freedom" than I did in 22 years of armed service. Every time you wrote your congresscritter you did more. Every time you protested, wrote a letter to the editor, signed an initiative petition. YOU were the mover and doer. Not I.

I love soldiers. I loved being a soldier. But what I did had very little to do with "freedom" or "justice" or "proclaiming liberty throughout the land."

I never get any comments or discussion back. It's like a black hole; things go in but don't come back out. I get that feeling that when I talk about soldiers and soldiering - outside a handful of people, many of whom comment on this blog and you know who you are, hat-tip to all o' ya - the nice people who've never really had much to do with us GIs (which, these days, is most people) look at me like Barfus the Dog-Headed Boy.

Hey, look. The guys in VIIth Corps who sat in the Fulda Gap from 1945 to 1991 helped defend freedom against the Soviets. The guys who sat in the boomers under the Arctic Ocean, in the silos in Minnesota and Tucson, who cycled out of Minot and Elmendorf. THOSE guys, you can throw a snappy salute to and buy 'em a drink. They kept you from being Red and/or dead.

Me? The guys in Saudi and Iraq and Panama and Grenada and Kuwait and Kosovo?

Not so much.

It's not that I don't want gratitude. It just seems to me like we use it, this automatic, casual "We support our troops" yellow-ribbon bumperstickerish reflex instead of really thinking about soldiers, who we are and what we do and why, and the implications of how we use our soldiers now that they're mostly "them" and not so much "us".

Just sayin'.