President George Bush maintains that we did not stay in Vietnam long enough. American efforts there started in earnest back in 1950 with us helping the French. Even before that the proto CIA (then the U.S. Office of Strategic Services) was running Deer Mission, an operation training Ho Chi Minh’s forces in the jungles of northern Vietnam during World War II. How ironic is that?

The futility of most occupations is not to be lost only on Iraq. Retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore in his book, “We Were Soldiers Once … And Young,” states that one week after we pulled out (after liberating Bong Son from North Vietnamese and VC Main Force units) the enemy “had returned to the villages of the Bong Son. Late in 1966 the entire 1st Cavalry Division was moved [there], where it remained for nearly 18 months as an army of occupation.”

Occupation practices did not bode well in the 20th century and will probably not work anywhere in the 21st. Too many factions within the drama are certain that their idea or plan is correct, from Western religious-socio-political perspectives starting in the era of the crusades a thousand years ago to the advent of Islam with its own religious-political ideals.

Today, the factions seem predisposed to brinkmanship, the unsubtle all-inclusive pronouncement that implies all or nothing. “Bring it on,” or “we will rid the world of the infidel.” Sounds more like road rage than a millennial statement of human social development.

It appears that the weapon of mass destruction everyone seems to be looking for is right in front of us in the form of testosterone. More pragmatism, the antithesis of the above, is what we need.

Greg Gilka

Machais