"An Experiment Gone Sour..."

Well, so much for the experiment!
You know the one I mean… Yeah, it’s amazing that we would resort to using live people to prove a point. But that’s what happened.

Let me explain, a chap by the name of Rumsfeld found himself between a rock and a hard place. He could either conduct a war on the cheap in terms of manpower or he could invest in a whole new concept of War using technology and automation.

Of course, there was a little pressure from outside to go with the technology…

Against the judgment of his generals, however technology won over boots on the ground!
And it’s simple as that!

We learned all about technology as we sat through “shock” and “awe”….the government’s answer to winning an argument before trying dialogue which would have been a hell of a lot cheaper…

The only problem: Our precision weaponry wasn’t all that precise. And the downside is lot’s of innocent Iraqis obliterated. Not the best way to win friends and influence people…
Then we moved in our down-sized Army to hold a city ten times its size!....And a country 130 times larger than the invading force—which violated the rule of successful “take-overs” from an aggressive enemy…

By this time, any general worth his salt, got out one way or the other! All that was left were the flunkies who responded to the Pentagon’s orders with “how high?” for their standard reply.

And to make matters worse, our esteemed leader rushed to judgment with the unwarranted pronouncement that we won and it was over…

Never has anyone been more wrong! And that precipitous judgment will ring down through history as one of the worst judgments ever made by an American president.

It was not over; it’s not over now…

Four years from the start of this unnecessary war, we are still there with lower force levels than is needed to simply maintain a balance. But this time, there’s a reason for it: We are out of fresh troops…And there’s no more coming!

In the meantime, the real enemy who has had a four year break to regroup and re-arm is planning to do us in at every turn…

We stand to meet them underpowered and over budget and with scant resources…
Not a pretty picture.

Too bad, the experiment didn’t work. We now have over 2,000 dead and who knows how many wounded because nobody will tell us the truth. Re-enlistments are down; morale is down; and there’s a lot of walking wounded who can’t wait to get out!

Hey, according to the Army planners, “that’s okay.” We learned something major and it was worth it… What we learned is not to ever again use real people in combat when we don’t have to… Real people get messed up and die. Real people need to get paid. Real people need to be hugged…

The big secret here is that in any new war, you’ll be seeing more robots getting blown up.
And robots don’t need armor protection. And robots don’t come home at midnight in body bags. So maybe there’s some good in all of this which requires some real probing to discover.

But there’s one big fly in the ointment. That is, robots need real people to make them work.
And that’s where we come up short. Oh, it’s not that we can’t conjure up people; it’s people with special skills we’re short on…

It seems that the government hasn’t been entirely candid with us implying that it’s meeting its quotas. Horse poop! The truth is that the government has been filling its ranks with under-qualified and unskilled people in special MOS categories. That’s a real no-no, folks.
In the end, that means that the nation with the most advanced technology is ham-strung because it can’t find good people to sign their lives away…

And considering how disposable our government considers mere mortals made of flesh and blood, it should come as no surprise!....

Les Aaron