ON WAR & STUPIDITY

I was driving hire-cars in Sydney during the Vietnam War. During a conversation I had with a soldier on R & R one day, he said "We're never going to win this war". Of course, I wanted to know how he saw it. Among the many common-sense things he offered me that day, he said "We rip their country apart with our artillery and our military might, we destroy their villages because we can't tell the difference between a northerner and a  southerner, or a capitalist or a commie; we can't find their snipers so we burn down their jungle and flatten their rice crops, and then we expect them to be grateful to us!!???"

He also said something so simply profound --

"You cannot napalm an Idea."

You'd think we'd have learned from Vietnam......

But, no.

We still allow our politicians

To let the Military tell us how to solve

Problems like "the war on..... [Insert here the Bogeyman of the Day]".

Our presence in Afghanistan was defended this week by our Defence Minister saying on the ABC's "Q & A" programme that "200 Australians were killed by terrorist bombs in Bali, planted by terrorists trained by Al Qaeida. Al Qaeda are in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have to stop them." Oh, great! Let's stop the killing of any more innocent Aussies by training more of our young people to be soldiers, give them weapons, and sending them off to kill and die. That's working just dandy, isn't it!

And some dumb-fucker war horse on radio this week said "We've trained them to be soldiers; we've got to give them something to do!" I felt like shoving a mortar up his arse and personally paying his airfare to Kabul.

Marvin Chomsky got a bloody sight closer to the mark when he said -- "If you want to stop terrorism, stop committing it."

Hasn't anybody seen "The Hurt Locker"?

End of rant.