Henri Reynard Speaks Out

IS THERE ANY HUMOR IN THIS WAR?

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People wear out, that is far more of a constant in life at sixty than at twenty. Humor changes too, at twenty jokes are mostly about someone else, at sixty they tend to be more about which parts are going faster than the others in our own body. One of my little rhymes that describes life has always been " That's the way it goes, First your money then your clothes". Lately it has become, "That's the way it goes, first your knees and then your nose" It is amazing how many parts of the human body can be made to rhyme with goes if you use a little imagination in how you describe them. Bill Mauldin saw the humor in war from the point of view of the grunt, the guy who has always carried every army on his back. I haven't seen any humorous cartoons about this war yet, but it is new. Familiarity not only breeds contempt but it also breeds humor. Every group of soldiers that ever stood inspection had their reliable jokes about their officers. For the most part officers have a very small sense of humor but they do have jokes about the ranks below them, probably created by the people that inhabit those ranks.

Like most endeavors we humans work at, war is serious business to many people. A few of us more twisted sorts have a hard time keeping humanity in the serious column much of the time. War is even hard to joke about for those of us who think humanity is mostly funny. Humanity is really most funny when they are most serious. I am angry about this war and hate to see our troops' lives at risk in a scenario that has been played out many times throughout human history. In my reading of that history this type of war is without notable success. Imposing freedom is one of those phrases that seems tragicomic to me. There are some things, like other peoples' governments that while they may deserve changing are too much like a stinking diaper, no fun to change. The real problem is, once you start you have to finish the job. That is compounded by the fact that you will just have to do it over again until the infant is trained. That fact makes childrearing, (I wonder if that's why they call it that?) a chore. This &% Billion dollar diaper change, (the numbers are below those symbols {75 and counting} which are symbolic of how I feel about this war), is likely to stink to high heaven before we are done. Then we are likely to have to do it all over again in the end.

"What fools you mortals be" in the words of the Bard as spoken by Puck in a "Midsummer Nights Dream". Unfortunately we are all mortal, and equally all fools in our turn. In a very short life of sixty years this has been impressed on me again and again. There are limits to solving problems by thinking, without adequate knowledge behind the thoughts. Nothing could be said about leadership more poignant than they just didn't know how their actions would turn out. In war that is always true, every bloody time. Ask Hitler, or Napoleon, or even Saddam who seems to lose every war he starts. Or even our own well-meaning leaders of the past, Lyndon Johnson comes to mind.

Conquest is a dirty little game that we have always refused to play, once we had this continent in our grasp. Last time we were going to save Vietnam from the Communists, it remains one of the few Communist nations after the fall of Communism. Before that there was Korea, we certainly stabilized things there didn't we? I guess we saved Panama from Noriega, or was that the canal we were saving? We certainly didn't save Iran by supporting the Shah, but if we continue to pursue this policy of preemptive war we will have to try again. Then of course there is China and Saudi Arabia and almost all of Africa and maybe Vietnam again. Doesn't France have nuclear weapons, how can we trust them? Germany could certainly build a bomb, or two or three. And Russia, how could I forget Russia. How far can fear take us down this path to endless diaper (regime) changes? I had a friend who had eight kids, five in diapers at one time, sound like fun? Is our President a person who believes in consistency in International Policies? Pray that he is not!

Lots of people think our President is cynical and manipulative, that doesn't scare me much. He is supposed to be cynical and manipulative, that is part of being a successful President. My greatest fear is that he really believes in changing regimes as a means to achieving a better world. Just think about him as an idealist who really believes Democracy can be imposed by force. Just believe that he means it when he is telling us how we can make the world safe for Democracy through war. Is that enough to make you shake in your boots? If it isn't you're already dead, please fall over and quit breathing, we need the room and the air for the living. You'll still get to vote in Florida, or Mississippi or Texas anyway so why do all of that work, breathing and thinking, let George do it all. Or maybe not! You may not know it yet but we have become a conquering nation is that funny? I don't think so, but then I don't have any sense of humor at all about this dirty little war theory of how to make the world a better place. None at all!