O Mesopotamia!

Well, unless you're faced with scant career choices or profiting from the war industry, you can't be blamed if you don't remember that there's a war going on. I mean, they're not even bothering to issue war bonds for this one.

But I have a few digressions to add to the voluminous spiels, rants, and bloviations about the war in Iraq.

1. Anyone who espouses an opinion that includes "boots on the ground" is not entitled to use that phrase. I don't care if they read it in Janes Defence Weekly while in the bathroom at Uncle Walley's; that doesn't mean that they get to have a serious opinion about the war and buttress it with that slogan.
2. I really feel no nationalist shame about "redeploying the troops," or an "immediate withdrawal" or whatever you want to call it. It is a military defeat no matter how you define it. I have no shame for withdrawing from a civil war where our soldiers are faced with the shameful task of nation-building and where we had little chance of winning anyway. Invading Iraq to oust Hussein was as absurd as it would've been to go to war with the Soviet Union in 1990 to unseat Gorbachev. Surely the dictators were a domestic menace, but they represented no active threat to the US's national security and their regimes were due to implode eventually anyway.
3. I decided over the weekend to dig into the Epic of Gilgamesh. An enlightening tale, I would say, but with no application to today's events. Gilgamesh, who was semi-divine and heard messages from the Gods, built a great wall at Uruk to protect his people and ventured on long quests with his hairy mythical wild man friend Enkidu. At a pivotal moment in his odyssey, he is given a beginner's test to start on the path to achieve immortality. He has to stay awake for six days and seven nights. However he cannot stay awake and fails the test. Although the story's end is somewhat is in dispute, it is assumed that armed with lessons of wisdom from his quest, he spent the rest of his days appreciating the simple joys of life.