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Down The Middle - Jan 10, 2006 - Printable Version
- Dr. Rumsfeld or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
by Down The Middle
Having been a child of the sixties, one might think that I should be so used to wars and rumors of wars that it would all seem quite passe'...but no, I'm apparently not politically sedated to the point of many of my pre-programmed brethren, who's first and only thought on 9/11 was, "Hell! We'll kick their ass.....and then, it's Miller time". Maybe, I'm just one of the pessimistic few who never quit worrying about “best laid plans” running amuck and events out-running logical thought (a great fear of the Cold War)…but there can be nothing positive with this administration's purposeful intent to order a “pre-emptive” strike on Iran…or at least, a pre-emptive strike with ………”the bomb”.
I was born of the Korean War, was still a child during the Dominican action and came of age with Viet Nam. To me, there are no memories of a time without war, conflict or “police action” and I have drawn every single breath of my entire life under the “nuclear umbrella".
After all these years, I still vividly remember watching black and white TV news coverage of U.S. soldiers stringing wire on Florida beaches, convoys of U.S. armor and infantry rapidly moving south-east across the country and surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) rearing their ugly shark-like noses towards the southern skies of Cuba.
It seemed like Viet Nam was barely over when I saw the charred bodies of our pilots from the failed US Embassy rescue attempt, in Tehran and my daughter was only a toddler, when we were all over some little island called Grenada. Before you could say, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", we kicked the "Jack" out of Panama.
Not long after that, we sent a major expeditionary force halfway around the world to save an allied, Arab, oil kingdom (Dictatorship) from an allied, Arab, oil dictator (King) and now, we're back there to stay...well, I guess, forever.....or at least the next thirty years, as Dr. Rumsfeld predicted. Whichever comes first, I suppose.
The reality is, the responsibility of this failed, post-invasion strategy (or the lack, there of) lies not only with the Defense Department but also within the Administration, itself. The desire to take Iraq may have been politically questionable...but their efforts to do it with less than half the number of troops needed for such an operation was a tragic display of this administration's military ineptitude and a huge failure in judgment by our top commanders who “went along”.
Had our military assaulted with a force of 350,000, saturating the Sunni triangle and immediately disarming the populace (Armor on every corner and squads of riflemen searching house-to-house), this insurgency would have been crushed before it ever began.
This doesn't mean there would have been no resistance movement. Obviously, when you invade and occupy any country, some home-boy's gonna' “pop-a-cap” in your ass...but the resistance would have taken much longer to organize and even more time to gain any real strength, all the while giving our forces more time to effectively learn "the ground" and shape it to our advantage.
Now, the American people find themselves replaying sad memories of Viet Nam and asking the question, “If we can't handle the Sunni insurgency in a limited area of Iraq, how can this administration possibly believe that we can take on another major action with Iraq's geographic and political neighbor, Syria, much less go to war with a nation as large and
powerful as Iran?”
The simple answer is yes, the neo-con strategy was foolishly arrogant to underestimate the impending Sunni rebellion and our soldiers have paid the price, leaving Mr. Bush and his Defense Department with a big PR problem…but at the same time, they have taken some advantage of our mounting losses by associating the guilt with the Syrians (for allowing Jihadists to cross their border)…and with the Iranians (for supplying “shaped charges” used in roadside ambushes) which further serves their rationale to expand the war.
The definitive answer brings us back to the original goal of the Neo-con's extended, Middle Eastern campaign to dominate the greater oil reserves and their belief that we possess and should use all of our martial capabilities to obtain this goal. No longer restricted by the politics of the past (and having no intention of acting, as such) they know that this is for the whole “bucket of oil", as it were…and they will use whatever force their arsenal will bear, up to and including the first use of nuclear weapons in anger, since World War II.
There is no doubt that we can defeat Syria and yes, Iran, too…and we can do it by conventional means (given the cost of war is always too great)…but to strike Iran with thermonuclear weapons, risking a global war with the other nuclear powers is sheer madness, reminiscent of General Jack D. Ripper in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satire, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/ In fact, the “not to worry”, rationalizing attitude of Dr. Rumsfeld (not to mention, those beady eyes) has me anxiously waiting for his arm to uncontrollably swing upright, as he blurts out “Mien Fuhrer!” to the President, during a complacent recitation of the casualty predictions.
Yes, I have always feared that it would someday come down to this (pretty much, since Cain whacked Able). After all, I was only a mere child when first instructed to “duck and cover” beneath my school desk, during a nuclear attack…and not truly, yet, a man when Peter Sellers, playing three different characters including the bizarre Nazi-American scientist, Dr. Strangelove, taught me to laugh in the face of nuclear annihilation.
Of course, I was young and immortal, then and I couldn't help but crack up at the thought of the President having to call up a drunken, Soviet Premier Kissoff and say, “You know how we've always talked about something going wrong with the bomb……………..the bomb, Demetri……...the hydrogen bomb”. Then, going on to explain to the Premier that one of our generals went “a little funny in the head” and ordered his squadron of B-52s to nuke Russia.
For me, “Strangelove” was the best movie that Kubrick ever made. Everything about it seemed perfect. The cast, the effects (black and white, btw), the script…you name it…truly, one of the best movies ever made. After all, if they've got you laughing your ass off at the thought of nuclear holocaust, it's got to be really, really funny!
What's not funny is the reality that these neo-cons who are running our country really think this way. To them, it is a brave new world where control is everything and real people are reduced to nothing more than Dr. Strangelove “casualty predictions”.
Having survived all those cold war years and the fears they brought with them, I was almost ready to believe that I had been wrong about mankind…and that I could actually end up dying a natural death, after all…but “NOooooo!” Just when you begin to believe that you might really make it…..your leaders go “a little funny in the head”.
I suppose, there's only one proper way to end this article…and that's with the lyrics from the closing song of Dr. Strangelove, played as mushroom cloud after mushroom cloud burst across the screen.
“We will meet again. Don't know where. Don't know when.”
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