Now it seems that we will be in Iraq for at least a few more years, regardless of who wins the Presidential election in 2008. And who knows how long we will be in Iran when we decide to go there later this year (that's a prediction.) In any event, Bertolt Brecht looms large in my cerebral cortex.
Brecht who escaped Germany some 75 years ago, wrote a play called Mother Courage while in exile. It was nominally about the Thirty Years War but was really about war's larger evil. There's one line in Mother Courage that is all there is to know, and all ye need to know:
"Peace is a waste of equipment."
You can't spend trillions year after year on weapons and not use them. A practice field is to a football team what Iraq is to our military. It's a place to work on new plays.
