I Hear the Drums of War

I remember 9-11 very well. I remember the desire for war ramped up like I'd never heard or seen in my life, and I was fifty by then. The Congress passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force without much opposition, and made war on Afghanistan for next to no reason. Afghanistan had agreed to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country, but the US refused, choosing to make war on the Taliban. We're still there almost eighteen years later. There's a reason Afghanistan was called the graveyard of empires. It's cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars.

I remember 2002, when W Bush went after Saddam Hussein. I was known by that time that W had told his biographer back in 1999, that he wanted to be a wartime president. That wartime presidents get reelected. Throughout 2002, the administration tried to keep us in fear with the threat of "mushroom clouds," and in March 2003, invaded and conquered Iraq. Then, whoops! they hadn't thought of what they were going to do once they got to Baghdad. and spent years fighting an insurrectio to our invasion that cost us many more lives than the invasion itself. That was Donald Rumsfeld 's brain child with W's blessing. That meant thousands more lives and trillions more dollars.

Now, in the distance, I can hear the drums of war once again. John Bolton cut his teeth on the Iraq War, now he's in the middle of going to war with Iran.