"Coalition Command Says Taliban Re-forming In Cleared Areas, Discusses New Strategy Initiative."
Gee, where have we seen all this, or something very like it, before?
Interesting what comes back to you, in different circumstances. It started with the sudden coming of summer weather to FL after a long record-breaking cold spell (re-convincing the convinced that there's no such thing as Gorclintonobama Global Warming.)
Got me remembering heat waves in Chicago, circa Joe McCarthy-Korean Police Action, Duck-And-Cover 1954. When it got so hot you could literally cook an egg on the concrete (baked, not fried.) When my pre-air-conditioning suburbanite folks, still gasping at midnight, trundled us kids into the Family Truckster for the long drive East down Dundee Road to Sheridan, through the North Shore waterfront Robber Earls (lower than Barons) mansion districts and to the Foster Avenue Beach part of the Burnham Plan to preserve a public park waterfront.
Where we, and half a million other heat-prostrated people, filled the parks from the cool damp sands at the very margin of Lake Michigan, where the water temp was never above 70 degrees and you could eventually move to the front and take a dip and feel the blessed chill. And a gentle nighttime version of the lake breeze brought cooled air in a couple of city blocks.
Half a million people, gently sorted by race and eth and pre-melting-pot origin, of course, but mingled at the margins, hardly any fighting or yelling, maybe just because it was Too Damn Hot, everyone knowing they were still all on the same All-American Page, all with the same so-very-human impulse, to Defeat The Heat, and maybe cook some hot dogs or ribs and as the night wore on, under those old incandescent street lights behind which you could still see the Milky Way, maybe games of tag or touch football or even a little Crazy Baseball between the pools of streetlamp light.
Flash to Providence, RI, October of 1965. A heterogeneous clump of about 25 people, stalwart New England ancients to longer-haired college students to kids in strollers, in front of the City Hall, with their poster board-floppy but correctly type-faced, syntaxed and spelled slogans up on 1x2s: "No More War," "Bring The Troops Home," "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and my favorite, "War Is Good Business, Invest YOUR Son." A silent, Quaker Meeting-sponsored patently non-violent vigil and protest. Pedestrians intentionally bumping and shoving and cursing the Goddam Fith Column Commies, you don't love America then go back to your effin' Stalin; grease-heads in '57 Chevvies with skirts and flaps tooling by, flinging curses and paper bags full of unmentionables; a few yawning reporters; maybe 100 cops with guns and clubs, and dogs on the way, ready to Take On and TAKE OUT The Evil Seditious Quaker Forces. And the Marine captain in his dress khakis, chest full of ribbons and macho pride, mindful of his solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, testing the non-violent convictions of the vigilant by dragging a young woman out of the group by her braid, slamming her to the pavement and kicking her fetal-position, passive resistance form until an older couple, out for a stroll, shamed and shouted him into stopping. His parting salvo: "If you M-F'in' pussies were in MY unit, I would have you SHOT!"
Jump to 1971, a drug-hazed Midwest liberal arts college where the students, mostly kids rejected by Ivy League schools, loving their country for its student deferments and easy access to dope, arguing that the University is supposed to be a Liberating Force, Right On, Power To The People, so Shut Down Classes, Give Everybody Passing Grades, and Become A Freedom Campus. And doing a totally feckless Protest March to Shut Down the Military Industrial Complex by Blocking An Unused Gate to Fort Sheridan (A Country Club of a "base") and an unused railroad siding. And Nixon sneaking out of the White House late one night to talk to anti-(Vietnam)war protestors, "Why are you against our wise policies? Can't you just trust that We Are Doing The Right Thing for The Freedom Of All Americans? (Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Hanoi/Cambodia/Laos, 2 million dead, half a trillion to the military, Agent Orange for everyone, there will be polo shirts and slacks labeled "Made in Vietnam" on the shelves at Wal-Mart before you know it!)" And the sad, "shameful" denouement of "winding down," the guaranteed failure of a corrupt puppet government and indigenous Army, the sorry pics of people boarding Air America UH-1s from the cupola of the US Embassy and being punched back from the last transports from Ton Son Nhut, million-dollar helicopters bulldozed into the South China Sea from the decks of billion-dollar nuclear carriers, the end game of "projecting power" so compendiously completed by throwing the nation's wealth, re-manned into war toys, into the corrosive salt water or left for "the gooks" to police up and use on those billion-dollars-to-war-contractors "bases" that "we have to hold, to stop the mortal march of Godless Communism."
All the while, Bell Textron and General Dynamics and Boeing and Colt, Armalite and Pantex and thousands of other businesses kept ramping up new weapon systems in concert with various Programs and Procurements, and RAND and the War Colleges kept churning out new scenarios and doctrines and strategies and tactics and the Branches of the Service fought their vicious, mostly invisible internecine warfare over Their Slice Of The Nation's Wealth, and the School of the Americas churned out secret police and politicians trained in oppression, violent oppression.
And finally, millions on the Nation's Mall, hearing again or maybe for the first time why the whole shootin' match was and is futile. Middle classers having to struggle to keep their little dears out of olive drab or khaki, weeping or heaving a sigh of relief depending on where The Lottery put their darlings' birthdays in the draft queue. Dedicated hippies and Yippies and Weathermen a tiny fraction of the people finally repelled by all that letting the War Racketeers have free play with our National Treasure.
A critical mass.
Enough finally to stiffen the backbones of politicians, set the generals to other tasks, and give Walter Cronkite a warm and fuzzy feeling that Americans were not all fools and cretins.
And then we have last night: The guy who lives aboard the boat across from me in the marina is ex-Marine, saw "service" in Bosnia and Kuwait and Iraq. A week ago, to the Census Takers, a well-dressed black woman and a kind of wimpy skinny white guy, he aggressively says "I got no truck with you people, you got no power over me, I DON'T PAY TAXES ON THE LAND. STAY OFF MY BOAT AND GET OFF THIS DOCK!" He's on a bender last couple of days, with a daily 12-pack of Bud consumed, he plays his music a little loud and late and some people on the next dock call the po-lice. Next morning he's fisted up and angry, demanding to know who ratted on him. A person from the next dock takes one of the generic dock carts to tote his stuff, words ensue, something happens and our PTSD thank-you-for-your-service Marine is knocked on his back, striking his head on a concrete step. Concussed, vomiting, losing consciousness. Two cop cars, the Fire and Rescue, and the EMTs, and at least a night in the ER with no "health insurance," not even VA healthcare because other than PTSD no "service-connected disability," no car, nothing but his boat and some skills. The kind "we" want to have around the house? Got ANY idea how many more there are like him? And how many "contractors," the Ronin of our New Age, mercenary in every sense of the term, are waiting for orders and "missions?"
Northrop Grumman, in every other WaPo, places ads that tug at the Patriot's Heartstrings, under the totally ambiguoous and opaque logo, "We Never Forget Who We Are Working For."
Jump to the corner of 4th Street and 38th Avenue North in St. Petersburg, FL. Nine people standing in four little bunches on the corners of a busy intersection, holding their poster board-floppy but correctly type-faced, syntaxed and spelled slogans up on 1x2s: "No More War," "Support Our Troops: Bring Them Home Now!", "Thou Shalt Not Kill," and my favorite, "War Is Good Business, Invest YOUR Son." A few of the people driving by honk, some obviously in agreement with the sentiments, a few rendering that Universal Salute and yelling incoherent rage and stuff . "F-ing Traitors!" You can imagine. Most folks, with as we say these days, "no skin in the game," buzz on by on their various Consumer Missions.
In "Catch-22," the officers, guys like General Scheisskopf, make the men "parade" for them, standing uniformed at "parade rest," which I assure you is not "restful" in any sense of the word. Stand them in the hot sun, until an adequate number have fallen flat from blood pooling in the lower extremities. Under the Asian sun, some 40,000 US GIs from all "branches" have dropped. Not to mention what, a half million Hajjis?
Is that enough, General McChrystal? What is The Mission, again? To sow dragons' teeth to reap more warriors driven by cultural behavior older than the Old Testament to take revenge on Our Troops, who are busy taking revenge on all the Hajjis who dared oppose another invasion?
Any chance of a Critical Mass here?