"A LOT OF TROUBLE"

“What a lot of trouble it would have saved if We had sunk the Hood and They the Bismark.” —Dylan Thomas in a letter to Vernon Watkins

He was talking about the great sea battle between the English ship, the Hood, and the German one, the Bismark. His point being, the end result would have been the same but a lot less lives lost.

I was thinking the same thing today about Viet Nam. That country is still under the control of the same Communist Party that we were told would end up invading the USA and killing us, and the USA is still intact and under the same form of government as it was back then.

Like siblings who after years of feuding finally accept each other for who they are and are able to spend the later years of their lives at least tolerating each other, or even getting along pretty well, Viet Nam and the USA tolerate each other, and in fact have been getting along pretty well.

So why did all those people have to die again?

And why are they dying now?

Oh yeah, that’s right, this time it’s different, the terrorists who were responsible for the loss of less lives than we have already lost in Iraq, and much less than the number of Iraqis who have died, not to mention Afghanistan, really are capable of invading the USA.

No wait a minute, not invading, just crashing planes into buildings, or smuggling in a dirty bomb that could kill hundreds, thousands, even millions. Maybe.

Which is why our answer was the same one we used in Viet Nam. No wait another minute. That doesn’t make sense. Exactly.