WARFARE, n.

1. The cost of keeping an active military force.

2. The practice of grand larceny, as it is conducted by nation against nation.

3. The measure of the extent to which a Government will go to keep its people from having to face the prospect of going to work to earn and keep their privileges.

NUCLEAR WARFARE: the most cataclysmic, expensive, and environmentally unfriendly way of saying keep your filthy hands off my stuff, or else.

RULES OF WARFARE: Whatever rules I can invent, and get away with, so that I will fare better than you and make it look like it was fair.

Until 1947, We the People were more comfortable with calling a spade a spade than we are now. And, calling war “war�. For which purpose there was a Department of War. Which amounted to a Department of the Army, there being a separate Department of the Navy, presumably because wet war is so much different from dry war. The decision of the Army Department to retain the title “War�, with its implication that the Navy was good for maybe tiddlywinks, doubtless contributed to the long history of animosity between the services.

The Department of War was remarkably peaceful. At the time of the election of Abraham Lincoln, with the secession of the Confederate States of America looming, the standing army of the USA was smaller than that of Bolivia. In both of the World Wars, the Germans and their allies gambled that the Americans could not possibly turn their diminutive armed forces into a significant military power in time to influence the outcome of the war.

In 1947, the creation of a separate Air Force, and a strong desire to restrict the squabbling among the three services to the annual Army-Navy football game, led to the creation of a single, unified Department of Defense. Which initially planned to defend American stuff against the kleptomania of the Communist nations by nuking them out of existence at the first false move. This strategy was defeated when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics got its own bomb and threatened to nuke back.

Ever since the creation of the Department of Defense, We the People have kept one of the largest standing armed forces in the world. One that in recent years has invaded Grenada, Afghanistan and Iraq, and is now being pointed menacingly at Iran. Meanwhile, our friends stand back aghast and fall away, our enemies gloat, and our people slowly sink into a quicksand of debt. Makes one wish we still could call a spade a spade.

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.