War is for children - the last one

War is for children - The Last One
by Charley Reese
Published on Monday, March 3, 2003 by King Features Syndicate

OK, this is my last anti-war column. The president's going to go, and I have a rule that when Americans go into combat, I don't criticize the war they're in. I'll raise hell trying to stop them from going to war, but once they're in it, I support them.

So I want you to do me, and yourself, a favor. Buy or rent two videos. One is "Black Hawk Down," the story of the Rangers' battle in Mogadishu, Somalia, and the other is "We Were Soldiers," the story of the battle in Drang Valley in Vietnam. Both are very good films, both are based on true stories, and both give as reasonably accurate a picture of war as you can get without making the audience throw up in their popcorn.

You watch these two films and then remind yourself "When I say 'let's go to war,' I'm saying young Americans should be subjected to this. While I'm sitting at home watching the war on television, this is the kind of hell these young men and women will be going through."

In both battles, Americans fought so heroically, sacrificed themselves so selflessly, it makes you want to cry. But you know what's really sad about these battles? Neither one mattered a damned bit. Neither one changed anything. A quarter of a million wounded and 57,000 dead Americans later, Vietnam went communist. In Mogadishu, not only was Mohammed Aideed never captured, but the United States later cut a deal with him. He died in 1996, and one of his sons is now the warlord.

All that heroism, all that blood, all that pain, all that suffering was for nothing. It accomplished nothing, nada, zero and zip.

Maybe you think that after Saddam Hussein is gone, everyone will live happily ever after, but I'm here to tell you that it will be the same. Nothing will change. No liberal democracy is going to bloom in the ancient desert of old Babylonia. No American will be able to say "I'm safer and freer now" because those young people died in Iraq. No Iraqi standing in the rubble is going to say, "Gee, I'm glad the Americans got rid of Saddam by destroying my home and my family." All this war is going to accomplish is to add to the world's store of misery ? more death, more wounded, more destruction, more debt, more poverty, more hatred, more profits for the merchants of death, more pollution and more terrorism.

To waste something so precious as a young life is awful to think about. Look at the faces of these young soldiers. Many are barely more than boys, really. Boys always fight wars because it's too strenuous for old geezers. These days, the generals will sit in air-conditioned comfort far from the sound of guns. They will hold their briefings for the press. When the war is over and the young men are buried or packed away in VA hospitals or sent home to try to make a living, the generals will get the book contracts, take off on the lecture circuit and get rich. Some of them might even get gifts of stocks from grateful corporations that profited from the war. When the next war comes, they'll be on television as "Fox News consultants."

And I haven't even mentioned the suffering that will be inflicted on the Iraqis ? their young boys, their children, mothers, fathers and grandfathers. You saw how Americans ran terrified from the collapse of the towers in New York. Imagine what it's like to be in a city that is being bombarded with 2,000-pound bombs, cruise missiles, artillery and Gatling guns. Imagine trying to save your children in such a mad inferno. Imagine what it would be like to see your children torn into ragged, bloody chunks of meat by shrapnel, or burned into a twisted piece of charcoal, with wet, yellow intestines leaking out. It's pure hell to be the collateral damage. But sit back and enjoy your war. It's what you want.