“May you live in interesting times.”

The origin of the title phrase has not been determined definitively, and that little mystery may never be solved. But if you checked out the hypertext link, you know that the phrase is not a blessing but an acknowledgment that we live in turbulent times.  And the past two weeks of high finance “Texas hold’em” is proof of that.  What will happen next is anyone’s guess.

In my lifetime, I have seen other “interesting times.” Consider the fact that I came of age during the 60’s. I went to Vietnam and I came home. More than 58,000 other Americans did not survive that needless war.

It is said that only those who have seen war understand the futility.  We destroyed Vietnamese villages to save them.  Is that sane? Does that make sense?

Could we have won that conflict? I do not think so.  The Vietnamese had a history of a thousand years of repelling invaders.  We were just the latest.

Fast forward to Afghanistan.  Can we win there? Only if the Afghan people support us. Look at the history? No invader has left that country victorious.  The English tried. So did the Soviet Union. Are we any different?

The screwball in Afghanistan is that we trained the same people to fight the Russians who are fighting us today, including Osama Bin Laden.  How crazy is that?