[Griff]

Dana-Not hypocrisy. The left and right don't agree on the reasons to go to war. Both have their ideologies to support and neither seems to consider likelihood for success, unintended consequence, or the kids that will die as a serious factor for consideration. Both are driven by a fantasy of power not based in reality, valuing intention over outcome. Armies are very good at the killing part the rest is far more difficult. My own preference would be to demobilize and wait for Canada to become a threat.

Fuzzy thinking by Clinton, Bush, and string of Presidents back past Teddy Roosevelt has changed the army from a unit with a clear objective, defending the territorial integrity of the US, to everything from a defender of fruit companies, missionaries, oil men, tyrants, messianic visionaries, to democracies, none having much more than a passing relationship with national defense. All create pretense for building the machinery of war which becomes its own arguement for deployment.

I've recently been involved in an attempt to talk a kid out of joining the army. He is the low-hanging fruit, bored and directionless, the kind of kid that with the best of intentions Democrats would kill in Darfur or the Republicans would kill in Iraq, either way, dead. Another guy pigeon-holed him recently. His own son is being deployed to Iraq again, a silver star recipient whose best friend died right in front of him trying to get up a set of stairs to kill the bad guys. Join the army with either Dems or Reps in charge? That'd be nuts.