That one gets to me too, proreason. The human spirit was not meant to be bridled. The only ones in a communist state who truly enjoy it are the ones in power.

They want to do it just as long as they are in charge of it.

Proreason…history needs to be taught before it can be remembered. Thus the classic dumbing down of the past thirty years by the left is finally reached fruition.

That is why we have a pox of fools to contend with, instead of citizens. Education fell…the media fell….wall street fell….industry is falling….

and the government is licking it’s collective chops at the prospect of installing socialism without having to lift a finger.

Which is why history is repeating itself. There exists a class of mindless drones who only have to vote and feel good about themselves. They are the left.

That is the thing that gets to me. No matter how many times it fails, fools still want to do it.

How stupid can you be? Does history mean nothing?

Chapter Five: “Battlefront!”

“My eyes widened in shock and my ears filled with clamour as a furious hail of fire erupted from the enemy positions, raining sudden death upon the GIs as they struggled ashore.

DADADADADADADADA! chattered the machine guns. BOOM! BANG! crashed the exploding shells. SPLOSH! SPLASH! erupted the resulting geysers of water.

So this is war, I thought. It’s really, really noisy.

As Tom Hanks and his ethnically diverse platoon struggled ashore so they could get busy saving Pvt Ryan, I paused the video for a moment of quiet reflection. Would I be as brave as Tom Hanks and Tom Sizemore when it was my turn to face the enemy and be tested in the crucible of battle?

Well, I never got to learn the answer to that one. My important work back at headquarters, making phone calls and attending meetings, kept me well away from the front lines. How I wished I could have been up there with the troops but its always been ‘duty first’ with me and if duty kept me in the Green Zone eating lobster and filet mignon, well, that was another part of the awesome burden of command…”

Excerpt from Chapter Seven: “Clouds over Abu Ghraib:”

“Abu who?” I asked.

“Abu Ghraib” corrected that piece of scum Ambassador Bremer, my friend and colleague. “Big prison in Baghdad. Around the corner from your place. It’s all over the TV, Rick. ”.

“Never heard of it”.

“Yes, well; those pictures could do us a lot of damage, Rick. What the hell’s been going on over there?”

“Sorry, General Sanchez he no here” I said. “Him go out for cigarettes. Him not back till later. You go away now. Go away!”

“Knock it off, Rick” said Bremer. “I know it’s you, you over promoted concession to ethnic diversity”.

“Dammit, I thought and the burden of command seeming very heavy indeed at that moment. How will I evade responsibility for this one?…”

Excerpt from Chapter Nine: “Staying the Course”

“So that’s our plan, Mr President, Mr Secretary of Defense” I concluded. “We keep on doing what plainly isn’t working until we eventually succeed. I call it ‘Lose to Win’ and I have every confidence in our ultimate success”.

“And, uh, when do you expect this successification to actually happen?” asked the President.

“I expect that by 2050 the current generation of insurgents will mostly have died of old age, given that life expectancy in Iraq is low and getter lower every day, and by then we’ll be in position to eliminate the last pockets of resistance, which we anticipate will be focused around nursing homes, Country Kitchen Buffets, park benches and so on”.

“I see” said Rumsfeld. “And in the meantime?”

“In the meantime we propose to continue kicking in doors and shooting like crazy at anything that moves – it sends a strong message to the Iraqis that we’re here to help them”

“Gee, I’m no expert” said the President “But isn’t that kinda counter-productive when you’re running counter-insurgency operations?”

“We’re not running counter-insurgency ops!” I said. “We didn’t plan for that. We didn’t train for that. So we’re not doing that. We’re doing what we already know how to do”.

“He makes a lot of sense, Mr President” defended Rumsfeld. ”Please continue, General”.

“Finally, we’ll keep sending our vehicles down the same roads at the same times every single day. The evidence we harvest from the wreckage gives us valuable intel about the current state of insurgent explosives technology”.

“What do you think, Don?” asked the President, for whom I always had the greatest respect and admiration until he failed to recognize my enormous talent for leadership.

“Well, it’s original, I’ll say that” said Rumsfeld, who I didn’t yet know was a treacherous snake who would also fail to appreciate my military genius. “Do you have enough troops to do the job, General?”

I didn’t, of course, but I wasn’t going to say that to those two. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear and to do so meant I might get a ‘frowny face’ on my next Fitness Report and that would never do if I was to ever make four stars…”

Excerpt from Chapter Twelve: “Aftermath:”

“What does this word, ‘ret’d,’ next to your name mean, Grandpa?” asked little Pablo. “Does it mean ‘retarded’?”

“No, it means ‘retired’ I answered. “Retired with a big advance from my publisher and with plenty of time on my hands to make up excuses for myself. You know, Pablo; in the old days bad generals who messed up their command either said sorry or had the simple decency to keep their mouths shut – but those days are over…”

Well, I do know of one event in Soviet history that some call a strike – Novocherkassk 1962. But the union had nothing to do with it, and it was more like a spontaneous protest march against yet another increase in output norms workers had to meet, plus increase in food prices. After 9 years without Stalin, people thought times were different. The authorities sent tanks and ordered troops to shoot into the crowd. Many people were killed.

“We have a lot of idiots still who think that failed system is just a tiny tweak apart from Nirvana.”

- Lots of them all over the Western world. This page with Greek riots photos:

http://www.boston.com/bigpictu.....riots.html

has lots of comments like this one: “The ineffective application of communism in many countries does not mean that the ideology is wrong!”

I should have said that the Soviets effectively outlawed any real labor unions. That is, in the sense of unions that represent the interests of the workers rather than the management.

And I think you would agree that no such unions were allowed to exist in the USSR. Wikipedia does:

Trade unions in the Soviet Union – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_trade_unions

Anyway, I have amended the article accordingly.

Cpacebo bolshoi, and welcome!

This country needs to hear more about what the Soviet Union was really like. We have a lot of idiots still who think that failed system is just a tiny tweak apart from Nirvana.

The main one spells his name beginning with an O and ending with an a.

And, of course, nobody in his right mind ever thought about striking. The only employer in the country was the state, and you didn’t strike against the state if you valued your life.