I had a first sergeant when I was in the army who told me a story when he was Westmoreland’s driver back at the beginning of the build up of Vietnam. Seems Westy and his staff were meeting to discuss what to do with that particular festering sh*thole and one of his staff, a crotchety old vet of WWII who’d served with Vinegar Joe Stillwell suggested “I say we start down in the delta and carpet bomb our way up to Hanoi with daisy cutters then bring the Seabees and combat engineers in and pave the whole damned thing. Make us a big old parking lot.”

Daisy cutters for those of you who don’t know are bombs that explode just off the ground and blast outward, cutting down everything at a height of about 6 inches. They were also known as “instant LZ makers” as they were used sometimes to blast a Landing Zone out of the jungle for an assault force to land.

The point of my rambling is, that sounds like a heck of an idea for the entire middle east. We can drill back through the asphalt to get at the oil. Westmoreland by the way thought it was a good idea but didn’t think they could get approval to do it.

Like the SF guys used to say (I’m going to paraphrase to make it relevant), “F**k it, kill them all, let Allah sort them out.”

When Desert Storm ended, many people asked me why we stopped short and didn’t go right into Baghdad when we had the Iraqi army on the ropes. Then years later during the Clinton administration when Hussein was continually violating the terms of the cease fire, the same people would say ‘Look, he’s acting up again because you guys didn’t go in and finish the job.’ These same people are the ones who now say we never should have gone in there in the first place.

The people of Iraq or more tribal rather than constitutional in their mindset. Violence is all they can think of right now. And as our time table for withdraw comes closer you can expect more violence as the rival factions jockey for power.

And it will again

and again

and again, ad nauseum. You cannot change them, any more than they can change us. They are frustrated that we cannot see the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow and we are frustrated that they cannot see that there is no pot.

They live on the premise of eternal hope.

We live on the foundation of experiences, both good and bad that temper our judgement to make a measured, careful decision and then act accordingly.

They always think that “It’ll work this time” when time and time it has proven it will not.

I could go on but it’s sufficient to note that conservatives on this blog pointed these events would occur but hoped they wouldn’t. We knew better.

Personally, though it’s a shame, I say that now that the efforts of our military have been trivialized, there is less to lose and let’s just pull out altogether and let them have at each other. Another muslim high-priesthood regime will ensue and they will have their little sh*tbox country and we should vow to never interfere again, even if begged. If they try to pull any crap on us, we just bomb them from the air, over and over and minimize or eliminate our casualties altogether.

Screw ‘em.

I have now vented my spleen….and feel better. Much as I detest what this administration has done to denegrate our military, I say “Fine, have it your way..but don’t ask me ever again to go fight in a land that hates us, or, more accurately, where my own hometown newspeople disrespect me, insult me, and marginalize me.”

If I had a son or daughter who was considering the military, I would say, “Not right now. Wait until we have an administration that knows how to respect it’s armed forces”

I intend no insult to the men and women who have had to go to Iraq and fight the good fight and (as always) do the best they could given the circumstances. And I think they did one hell of a job. But now Blammo and his panty-waste cronies, intellectuals that they are, have admitted, by their actions, they have no respect for anything our uniformed citizens do. Not overseas, not at home, nowhere.