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I was not surprised Chuck Hagel had to go. After all, he was among the very few in governments of late who had ever seen combat, not to mention to have been wounded. Men of his ilk do not draw their swords at the drop of a hat, unlike neocons, who demand bloody solutions to every problem, others”€™ blood. Hagel did not want escalation in Iraq, Iran, and Syria. He was selected for his willingness to challenge the war hawks of the Republican Party, and to oversee a shift to a peacetime military, but it was not to be. Obama is muddled”€”as are the American people, while they watch suburbs burn when cops shoot black criminals, as Islamic thugs behead innocent Americans in color. It’s a confusing time, to say the least.

Let’s take it from the top. It was the good Uncle Sam who assessed all strategic and moral issues in terms of their function in his rivalry with the Soviet bear during the Cold War. This led to a loss of perspective that had us empowering the Pakistani military’s promotion of Islamic extremism. Even after 9/11 the penny did not drop. We still thought we could order the duplicitous Pakis to be on our side. Thirteen years later, we are still losing men and material in Afghanistan and still trust the Pakistani army, one that covertly supports the Taliban while accepting the billions we pour into that lousy place year after year after year.

History has taught Obama nothing, starting with Alexander the Great, from the British Empire down to the Soviet Union. They got to Afghanistan safe and sound, but left rather suddenly and with their tails between their legs. As the great Yogi Berra said, “€œIt’s déjà vu all over again,”€ and if it weren”€™t as tragic as it is, I”€™d be laughing my head off. Who the hell cares what those savages do to poor girls that want to learn to read? Why should American boys die for those poor women who are daily raped and tortured by Afghan men? The same thing happens to African girls and women, yet I don”€™t see Obama landing the Marines over in Nigeria. We are not our sisters”€™ keepers and even if we were, we would lose yet again, as we lost in Vietnam, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan. The moment our last boys quit that godforsaken land, the Taliban will take over and the present Afghan government will install itself in Virginia and enjoy the billions in aid they have stolen these last 14 years.

And speaking of graft, does anyone reading this really believe that ISIS knows how to fight better than we do? Or even the discredited Iraqi army? It does not, except for the fact that it’s better paid and on time. The Iraqis broke and ran last spring despite the 25 billion greenbacks we”€™d given them for training and arms, because most of it had ended up in the pockets of non-fighters back in Baghdad. Generals had stiffed colonels, and colonels had stiffed lieutenants, and lieutenants had stiffed soldiers of their pay, and so on down the line. Why fight on an empty stomach when your pay has been docked by fat men in suits who have safely deposited American dollars aimed for you into Western banks? Obama should know that all the money in the world will not stop the graft of the Iraqis, both Sunni and Shiite. He is now requesting more money to bribe the tribes and rearm those who left their equipment behind, which is the whole of the Iraqi army. If this were a movie, it would be laughed off the screen; perhaps a comic book would do better.