An interesting interview just now on CNN with members of the 7th Cavalry, probably chosen because of their name recognition. Was that the one that Custer commanded?

There was what may have been a very telling moment, in regards to our soldiers' own enthusiasm in this operation, when a graduate of West Point's class of 2000 was asked if he was "anxious to go" into combat. He had a sort of halfhearted smile cross his mouth and said, "Ready to go." The reporter asked him about the hesitation he seemed to be communicating, but he just sort of drifted away from the camera.

These soldiers don't seem to have the full-on jingoistic kill-rage the soldiers in Gulf War 1 exhibited. What if they realize they're being put in harm's way by a president fully for reasons of re-election, and realize this is, as Sen. Robert Byrd rightfully put it today, a "war of choice," whether that's a right or wrong choice.

It would be horrible to be there and understand someone else sending you there looks at your life as an expendable luxury, and even went on TV telling the American public there will very definitely be heavy casualties. Thanks, commander in chief. I don't want our soldiers to know what the soldiers in Verdun or Vietnam knew. I fear for them; they had no part in choosing this.

His father waited much longer to mobilize ground troops. BUt then his father at least had the justification of Hussein's invasion of Kuwait. God alone knows this Bush's reasons, but he has no true cause that the world acknowledges.

Suppose the rest of the world decides we're a threat worth fighting and decides to do it with more than words. That does sound absurd, doesn't it? Just like the idea that the Kaiser would slink out of the country at the end of WW1 was to Germans.

What would it look like? We'll only know if Bush decides to go for Iran too, and why wouldn't he?

Labels: politics

  ¶ March 19, 2003