A WAR FOR EVERY GENERATION, BY R.L. Huffstutter

A WAR FOR EVERY GENERATION, BY R.L. Huffstutter, a photo by roberthuffstutter on Flickr.

A WAR FOR EVERY GENERATION
By Robert L. Huffstutter

Looking back on my youth, I find it quite fascinating that when I was 18 in 1960, many WORLD WAR I VETERANS were still employed and quite able-bodied. The veterans who had won WORLD WAR TWO were in their mid-30s to early 40s.

The men who fought the KOREAN WAR were in most cases, new draftees and were in their early 30s. So, at any given time in an evening of drinking at the neighborhood bars that would permit 18 year-olds like myself to drink, I enjoyed conversations with men who had fought in three of America's first wars of the 20th century.

Looking back on this now, it is difficult to understand that ALL of our WWI veterans have passed away, that most of our WWII veterans are gone now and that the Korean War vets still alive look hardly any older than those of my generation. America, the freedom-loving nation we are has guaranteed that every American born since 1890 through 1993 has had a chance to get involved in some really nasty and ugly kind of bloody combat. If there was ever a time when we were not involved in some type of campaign, it might have been from 1975 until we sent men and women to Yugoslavia to save the Muslim population from being wiped out by a government that was attempting to cleanse the nation of ethnic minorities.

How ironic that soon after the U.S. helped the United Nations achieve victory in Kosovo, we were attacked by religious fanatics on 11 September 2001, an event that has kept us engaged in more bloody combat since that infamous day in our nation's history.

We are, it seems, always in some type of conflict that costs the lives of young men and women in uniform.

In my retrospective opinion, the last bona-fide war we should have entered into was the Korean War.

Every conflict we have entered into since dividing Korea has gained us nothing and cost us dearly.

To continue to try and export democracy to those who will most likely never accept it is costing us lives, billions of dollars and dividing our national unity. Whatsmore, we continue sending billions of dollars in aid to nations we do not trust, to nations who do not trust us. How much longer will we continue rebuilding the infrastructure of nations where suicide bombs go off on a daily basis?

Has our conflict in the Middle East made us a safer nation? No,
it has created more enemies. That we supported the toppling of the governments of Egypt and Libya is totally beyond belief considering what happened in our meddling in the Iran of the 1970s.

What the U.S. will do next is akin to spinning the Wheel of Fortune. Someone once said that a nation deserves the government it gets. Well, I guess we are living proof of that old adage.

Will the next Dictator please take a number and wait for the bombs to fall?