An interesting bit from Colin Powell's farewell to NATO speech:

Powell focused on the alliance's spectacular success with the collapse of
the Soviet Union and joked about his misgivings when former Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev once told him the Soviet bloc no longer represented a
threat to the West. "He looked across the table at me and he said, "Oh,
General, I am so sorry, you're going to have to find a new enemy,"' Powell
said on Wednesday. "I remember my reaction, "I don't want to. I've got a lot
invested in this enemy, you know. Don't change my life just because you're
having a bad day.

Reading that brought me back to the late 80s, when perestroika was taking place, and the Berlin Wall came down, and men like Vaclav Havel became presidents instead of dissidents. It was an amazing time; probably one of the most significant historical events of my lifetime, so far at least. Thanks to The Day After, my biggest fear as a child was getting nuked by Russia.

And then suddenly it was all over. "Oh, General, I am so sorry, you're going to have to find a new enemy."

And I guess we did.

Speaking of...
Rumsfeld got his hat handed to him a bit yesterday when, thinking he was in Kuwait for a rah-rah pep rally, he was instead seriously questioned by several U.S. soldiers about the lack of proper armor for their vehicles. He flustered for an answer, and basically said, You Get What's Given To You.

Then I got to thinking about the lack of supplies these soldiers apparently have, and it didn't surprise me, considering that they're fighting the War of No Sacrifice. Sure, over a thousand U.S. soldiers have died, and umpteen thousands of Iraqi civilians have died, but we here at home don't really notice those things. We're not supposed to. And we're not supposed to actually have to give up anything to make America safe from terror.

We're supposed to go shopping.

If we're serious, as a nation, about coming together and fighting this thing, then we have to actually sacrifice something. During World War II the auto industry basically stopped production of new vehicles, because all the steel and rubber and other materials went towards the War. Food was rationed. Clothes were homemade. And troops were drafted.

Is that a central problem with this war effort we're supposedly in? That we're trying to win a war where no one's bothering to give up anything? Instead of scrap metal drives, we're supposed to go buy new widescreen TVs in order to keep our economy going strong.

The War on Terror isn't nearly the same thing as World War II. We're not fighting two massive fronts at the same time. We're not trying to break into Fortress Europe like we had to in '44. So maybe we don't need to be sacrificing much.

But when I hear about troops actually having the balls to go toe to toe with the Secretary of Defense, because they don't have enough armor to protect them from the ever-increasing attacks, I wonder if maybe we should be giving up a little.

But then I go right back to my basic argument: we shouldn't have even been there in the first place.

But we're there, and people are dying, and if protecting those guys means some guy not being able to buy a new SUV next year, then I'm all for that.

This fucking war. I just can't wrap my head around it. I want to write, "It would be so much easier if there was a big army with uniforms and flags and a evil guy with a bad mustache running everything."

But that wouldn't be easier.

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this...