Wars R US

We've played Domino Theory before; the dominoes didn't fall the way we thought then, after Vietnam, and they are not falling the way we'd like them to now. Games are funny like that.

We have a Cold Warrior Secretary of State whose expertise is superannuated. In an inversion of our prior fear--namely, that if one country fell to Communism in S.E. Asia, the rest would follow--we now operate on the presumption that if we knock one country into democracy, the rest will gleefully follow suit.

In a supposedly good-faith effort to staunch the Red Tide 4o years ago, we defoliated Vietnam to flush out and defeat the enemy, or so went the plan. Today in Iraq, there are precisely two trees to obscure our targets, yet our vision is no clearer, nor is our success any more stunning. I never thought that Vietnam would begin to look like an exercize in sanity compared to the latest rungs of madness which we are ascending.