Monday, May 30, 2016

Veterans Day: No Man's Land




And I can't help but wonder, now Willie Mcbride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause? '
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie Mcbride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again. 

— Eric Bogle, "No Man's Land"


Trump and Clinton: Talking Ourselves Into It

I've been watching a Facebook discussion of the candidates started by Jim Wright (and you should read him) and I realized I was watching Democrats persuade themselves that a protégée of Henry Kissinger is somehow a wise maker of foreign policy. How is this different from what Republicans are doing with Trump, persuading themselves that he will be a good President? I mean, Henry Kissinger? The man who suborned Nixon's treason, dragging out the war in Vietnam for another four years, killing 20,000 US troops, something like a million Vietnamese, illegally bombing Cambodia, and bringing the genocidal Pol Pot to power, leading to the deaths of two million Cambodians.

I grant that Trump is likely to be worse than Clinton (and he met with Kissinger himself on the 18th of May.) But this is a huge failing, and all the long-time Clinton supporters I know or have read are just glossing it over.

Where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?