They is us

I believe Pogo said it best.  We have met the enemy and they are us.  Or maybe it could be paraphrased to we have met Them and They are us.  American people are always complaining about their politicians, they are always grumbling how did this bum get elected?  People voted for him that's how.  People are always complaining about  how their elected officials don't seem to be very moral, but if you look at the American public (Beaglestonians, and all you fans of Beaglestonia out there excepted) is not all that moral.  You hear it again and again and again that there is no free lunch and yet Americans always vote for the guy who promises them a free lunch.  Well, of course all the politicians offer a free lunch, but I guess that proves that they are not all that stupid.

And then there is that thing where the left wants one thing and the right wants another.  Well they all want peace and prosperity, but they differ on how to get there.  To grossly simplify the two without getting into any arguments, I think we can say that dems think the government is the solution and the reps think it is the problem.  And of course neither party likes the other party's candidates.

Those wars I listed after my last post, we won WWII and the first gulf war, and Korea was a stalemate, which leaves Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan as the two winless wars.  Well Iraq/Afghanistan is still going on, but it's hard to say what would constitute victory there.  That was the problem with Vietnam, what would victory have looked like?  American troops there forever?  A corrupt kleptocracy of the south Vietnamese forces, teetering on the edge of collapse and sucking down American aid like a drunkard?

Vietnam had long roots, probably beginning with French Indochina, the Japanese, the war, the French again, and then the US taking up the fallen flag in the red glow of China.  Afghanistan, well we were always going to go there after 911, but the feint towards Iraq is a puzzlement.  I'm putting it on the fevered dreams of the neo cons and a weak prez under the control of evil Dick Cheney.  

And another thing is we are a nation of hotheads.  The cooler heads stayed in their own country, while the guys who couldn't get along or who wanted to get ahead, who wanted to do something, came here.  We are a nation of people who are angered easily and want to do something and we are the most powerful nation in the world so if anything is going on that we don't like, we have a powerful urge to go over there and do something..

See, I thought the lesson of Vietnam is maybe we shouldn't always go over there and do something, but maybe the lesson was really that we should just wait until the current nosebleed is stanched before we go looking to get another one.