In My Next War I'm On The Other Side of Asymmetric Warfare

Between 1972 and 2016 our country was always at war. Even in the decade between 1991 and 2001 when The Cold War was over and the Gulf War was won, American soldiers patrolled the world. During the "peace" we bombed Belgrade, intervened in Kosovo, fought fierce battles in Somali and sat on our hands during the slaughter in Rwanda.   

From 1985 to 2007, I was a bearded, middle-aged civilian who could say "Been there, done that" to military service. Then in 2007, I re-enlisted, served in Iraq for a year with Army Aviation and then volunteered for service in Afghanistan.  

I volunteered for three asymmetric wars.  America lost two (the Vietnam War and the Iraq War) and is about to lose the third (the War in Afghanistan).

My favorite service was in a symmetric war, The Cold War. America and NATO won that one in the way that any team wins if the other team goes out of business. The Soviet Union ceased to exist. We won. 

In the asymmetric wars, I was on the side with the guns and the bombs and the drones and combat aircraft.  But in each case I was on the losing side.  

In each of these wars, America killed many times more of the people of the country we invaded than we lost ourselves. The lesson we should have learned but did not:

"Killing is the weapon of the strong. Dying is the weapon of the weak. It is not that the weak cannot kill; it is only that their greatest strength lies in their capacity to die in greater numbers than the strong." 

If Trump steals the election and then the nation, he will have the guns: he will have the military, the police and the militias who are most ready of all to kill other Americans.  

The protesters who stand up for America in the wake of Trump and the Republicans betraying America will have to be ready to die. 

The quote above is from the book "Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War" by Viet Thanh Nguyen.  He was born in 1971. He was four years old when the North Vietnamese won the war. He came to America as a refugee.  He wrote about the millions who died to win the war against American industrial war.  

I hope Joe Biden wins in a landslide, but if he loses by theft and treason, we have to be ready to fight back. My fifth war will be on the other side of asymmetric warfare. 

Sophie's Choice and Several Others by Meryl Streep

 

After we watched "Sophie's Choice" my wife and I decided to watch several Meryl Streep movies.

We next watched "The French Lieutenant's Woman" which, surprisingly had no French Lieutenant. It is two stories, one contemporary, one in the 19th Century with Streep and Jeremy Irons the lovers at the center of both stories. The movie has two endings. It's delightful. It was filmed in 1981, the year before "Sophie's Choice."

After that we watched "Iron Lady" in which Streep is Margaret Thatcher. The main thread of the story is Thatcher widowed and long out of power struggling with herself at the end of her live. The movie flashes back to Thatcher in power and to Thatcher before she was in power--always conservative, always ambitious.

For Sophie's Choice, Streep trained for months to learn Polish and German. The year before for "The French Lieutenant's Woman" she learned to speak with an the English accent of a woman from the Midlands. In "Iron Lady" the English accent was back.

Our next movie is "Out of Africa" in which she learned Dutch.

I am not sure how many of Streep's movies we will watch, but we will definitely end with "The Devil Wears Prada."

Military Service Always Risks Death

 

In 1971 Murrie Hubbard and I graduated from Stoneham High School.  Among the 371 graduates only Murrie and I served during the Vietnam War.  

Murrie went straight to the Marine Corps. After completely Basic and Infantry training he went to Vietnam, serving a year with a Marine Rifle Company.  In 1973, Murrie came home. He was uninjured.

At the end of January 1972, I went to US Air Force Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio.  After basic, I went to an eight-month missile electronics school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver.  In October I went to Hill Air Force Base, Utah.  That was the closest I ever got to Vietnam during the war.  

For the next 13 months I worked as a live-fire missile technician. On November 9, 1973, after Murrie was home, I was blinded and had a couple of fingers hanging from my right hand after a missile test explosion.  I came home several weeks later. My hand was still bandaged, my fingers in a cast and my right eye patched.  

When we swear to support and defend the Constitution, we may come home unscathed, or injured or dead.  There is no partial oath.