Blowing in the Wind

Peter, Paul and Mary had a hit in the turbulent sixties called “Blowing in the Wind”. If you’ve never heard of it; (I’m showing my age here), that’s too bad. Peter, Paul and Mary, Pete Seeger, The Smothers Brothers, et all led the way in protesting the Vietnam conflict. Now we are involved in another seemingly endless conflict in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and a host of Emirates, Pakistan…you name it. Oh sorry! Did I offend someone by mentioning our “so called” allies in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan? In any other scenario, the hold that Saudi Arabia and others have on us with their oil reserves would be called extortion. By the way, you haven’t seen them backing our play in the Middle East, have you? And if you think some high ranking folks in Pakistan didn’t know Osama Bin Ladin was hidden away there, you are truly misled. But; I digress, since I really wanted to write about a peculiar type of ally. A brother in arms with whom our troops have trained, ate, slept and sometimes even fought with. And now these same brethren are killing their mentors. Unless you have experienced some sort of crucible or extreme trying circumstance with someone, it is truly difficult to express the depth of this betrayal. Veterans know exactly what I am writing about. Unfortunately it took a tremendous amount of loss (any loss of this kind is a tragedy IMHO) before the powers to be finally cancelled any further training and interaction with the Afghanis by our troops. Now, if they would just figure out we are really not wanted there and put an end to this travesty. I guess the empty chair that Clint talked to is not so “far out” after all. The answer my friend is apparently blowing in the wind.