Bush: General I'm the Decider

I was thinking of posting "The Charge of the Light Brigade" by Lord Tennyson. But the relevant lines are simply these:

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismayed?
Not though the soldier knew
Someone had blundered.

In the late 1970s, I stopped worrying about the possibility of an accidental nuclear war being started by our side. I was aware of major changes that had been made by the U.S. Air Force involving safeguards and training that largely made it much more difficult for some sort of first strike, accidental or not.

The rumblings are out there that nuclear weapons might be used by the U.S. sometime in the next year or two. Maybe not, but the mere idea of talking about nuclear weapons being used against Iran is not a proud moment in American history.

I supported the war in Afghanistan, but given Bush's incompetence and his willingness to run off to Iraq before the job was finished, maybe the war in Afghanistan was also a mistake. But Iraq? And now possibly Iran? This has become a nightmarish era. In a dangerous season of optional unneeded wars led by incompetent officials, let me offer a poem from half a century ago:


The Fifties


The wretched summers start again
With lies and armies ready for
Advancing on that fast terrain.

Like those of China, Poland, Spain,
With twenty territories more,
The wretched summers start again.

The rumors and betrayals stain
The helpless millions of the poor
Advancing on that fast terrain.

Asian and European rain
Falls from between the blue of yore;
The wretched summers start again.

And rubble and the jungle gain
A foothold on the cultured shore,
Advancing on that fast terrain.

Short youth was shortened by the pain
Of seasons suitable for war:
The wretched summers start again,
Advancing on that fast terrain.


—Roy Fuller (1954)