It's the same stupid war. Why can't they learn? It doesn’t matter if they are Democratic or Republican, black or white, Catholic or Protestant, southern or midwestern, they all love to go to war. It must be something about being “the most powerful man in the world.” They take office and realize that they can’t snap their finger and fix the economy, stop the bad buys, and give everyone heath insurance. But they can snap their fingers and blow things up, like foreign civilians and American boys.
And it’s always a Big Lie they must come to believe themselves. They’re not evil people. They’re not even stupid. Johnson was the best politician of his era and responsible for landmark civil rights legislation and Medicare breakthroughs. Nixon went to China, and smartly navigated a difficult economy. But they both convinced themselves and tried to sell us on the Domino principle. Oh that was a good one. Vietnam was going to fall, crashing into Cambodia, eastward to Australia and zipping through the top of Africa, the avalanche prompting a tidal wave, eventually swamping North America, turning us into Communist automatons. The Big Iraq Lie is fresher in our memories. No WMDs? Never mind. At least we got rid of Saddam Hussein, 100,000 civilians and 5,000 American boys later.
And now we have another American president pushing his own Big Lie. He’s likely the smartest, most well meaning one yet, but something about if we-don’t-install-our-government-the-bad-guys-will-find-safe-haven-in-places-we-can’t-rea
ch. Shades of the corrupt of Nguyễn Văn Thiệu, that Hussein fellow, and now our latest anti-freedom hero, Hamid Karzai.
Can you imagine an American that hadn’t staged and lost Vietnam and Iraq and now Afghanistan? I’d like to have those boys home and that pot of money sitting in the bank earning interest.
They are delusional, every one of them. Maybe it’s in the white House water.