Fifty years ago we gathered all of our young men, skimming the best, and the sons of Admirals and Generals, and sending them off to indoctrination at West Point and Annapolis. Their teachers were the minor heroes of World War Two, still flush with the glory of what they had done to defeat Hitler and Hirohito. They taught, along with math and logistics, a creed of anything is possible if you just persevere.
Most of the new military leaders produced in this hot house of unrealistic expectations, were winnowed into the Indo-China conflict we have come to call the Viet Nam War.
To many of you any discussion of Viet Nam is boring. Ancient history. Not relevant to today's issues. Just another Old Hippy trigger point to rant and carry on about.
Not for the Admiral's son, John McCain. His plane crashed, he was captured, tortured and held prisoner for years in North Viet Nam. When he was released he learned that the war was lost, his sacrifice was wasted, and his country had lost the spine to fight to victory - as his teachers, and father, had done in the 1940's.
He has spent the past 45 years trying to find a way to justify what happened to him, and his fellow pilots and ground forces. He has been trying to find a war to win. A way to kiss his boo-boo and make it all better.
The various little "excursions" during the Reagan Administration, although it harnessed the pathology, and people, with the same mind set as the McCain's of this world, just never quite got the attention and glory it was felt that they deserved. No big win in freeing a medical school in Granada, or blasting boom boxes at the palace in Panama. They wanted a real war. One where America kicked the shit out of someone and strode vaingloriously across the earth to the strains of The Washington Post.
Then along came George H.W. Bush. He drove the Republican Guard out of Kuwait, sent back photos of tanks racing by startled camels in the desert, while bemused Bedouins looked out of their tents. Then he stopped. Recognizing the problems he would confront, he decided not to go into Baghdad.
The aging warriors were mighty pissed! This had been their chance and Read My Lips had blown it.
Bill Clinton, relatively free from the Viet Nam obsession, spent his time chucking stuff at aspirin factories and small groups of desert dwellers. Fully justified, but lacking the pizzazz of tanks crushing walls and jet planes bombing cities.
Then comes Boy George and the McCain's and the whole crew of armchair warriors finally have someone they can use to win their war.
Every time John McCain opens his mouth it is to demand victory. Victory in Iraq. Victory in Afghanistan. Victory somewhere, damn it, and devil take the cost. The cost in human lives. The cost in American and NATO funds. The cost on the body politic. He just doesn't give a damn.
This time he is going to win...