During the Vietnam War there were lots of slogans against our involvement in southeast Asia. The one that has stuck in my mind for, lo, these 46 years since the war ended is one that I still have on a key chain, stamped in pewter:
War is not healthy for children and other living things.
Yep, it’s one of those “hippie” things, a leftover from a war that the United States was ill-advised to get involved in.
Since then we have had two wars in the Mideast Gulf region, and another in Afghanistan, wars that have had questionable results and no definitive resolutions. What was accomplished in each war was, at best, an uncertain pause in hostilities. There were incidents of flareups and skirmishes along the way, but what was important was the near cessation of terrorist attacks around the world.
This past week our president, who anticipates standing trial in the US Senate for alleged crimes for which he was impeached by the House, instigated the assassination of Qassem Soliemani, the head of Iran’s Qud Force, using as an excuse the claim that Soliemani was planning multiple attacks against US forces in the region, among other acts of aggression. (Were his reasons legitimate, or is it just another case of misdirection from the impending trial?)
As seems to happen with so many of Trump’s foreign relations endeavors, the Pentagon has a different story than that of the Joint Chiefs than that of the president. There seems to have been little, if any, consultation with regional experts or military strategists or our allies in NATO.
The talking heads on this Sunday morning are talking about asymmetrical retaliation by Iran. There has been a recent report (in the past couple of hours) of an attack on an air base in Kenya that is routinely used by the United States military. What is in the offing in the hours and days to come?
Trump promised a drawdown of U.S. forces in the Middle East (specifically Afghanistan), yet he is now sending thousands of our young men and women specifically because of tensions he caused by taking out Soliemani.
I wouldn’t mind so much the reintroduction of troops in the Middle East if our leaders had a clear philosophy of how to deal with the complexities of middle east tensions.
I wouldn’t mind it so much if our military had had the opportunity to devise a realistic, clear, executable strategy to bring peace rather than foment war in that region.
But Trump is not good at establishing order. He is good at creating chaos.
He says he likes peace, but that is another self-delusion and lie to the people.
He is also very impulsive and suggestible. Did the Saudi Crown Prince have a hand in setting these things in motion?
We are not likely to know the truth any time soon.
War is not healthy for children or other living things.
And chaos is not healthy for anyone who desires a modicum of stability.
That doesn’t just apply to old hippies. Or solely to Americans.
It applies to all the adults and children around the world who have not been consulted about this Dante’s Inferno and the circles of hell being inflicted upon us without our consent.
Has our president doomed us to repeat old mistakes? And if so, in whose name?
I never envisioned that slogan pertaining to friends suffering all these years later from exposure to Agent Orange. Another friend died recently, and other I know have health issues related to Agent Orange. I seem to have avoided that particular hell.