Cavett On War

Dick Cavett writes: What My Uncle Knew About War.

Excerpts:

The phrase Bill hated most was "gave his life." That phrase is a favorite of our windbag politicians; especially, it seems, the dimmer ones who say "Eye-rack."

"Your life isn't given," I remember him saying, "it's brutally ripped away from you. You're no good to your buddies dead, and when the bullets start pouring in you don't give a goddamn about God, country, Yale, your loved ones, the last full measure of devotion or any other of that Legionnaire patriotic crapola. You just want you and your buddies to see at least one more sunrise." ...

The other word Bill hated was "sacrifice." Sacrifice is something you give up in order to get something in return. What good are we getting from this monstrous error? Cooked up as it was by that infamous group of neocons (accent on last syllable) who, draft-averse themselves, were willing to inflict on the (largely unprivileged) youth of this country their crack-brained scheme for causing democracy to take root and spread like kudzu throughout that bizarre and ill-understood part of the world, the Middle East...

I cringe at the icky, sentimental way the president talks about what we owe to the people of plucky little Iraq. You'd think we all grew up ending our "Now I lay me down to sleep" with "Ņ and please, Lord, be good to Iraq." They detest us now, along with just about everybody else. Personally, I don't give a damn what happens to Iraq, and don't think it's worth a single American life.

(Thanks Curtis)