I am struck by the image of a pair of F-15’s or F-16’s ($100M+) being herded around by an AWACS operation ($XXXM+) on loan from NORAD ($XXXM+) . . . and the picture of said high-performance machines pulled up steep with full flaps, landing gear, and snow-shovels sticking out in the wind, in a Dumbo attempt to hang in the air next to a twin-prop Piper Comanche. Of course, one easy option would be to simply blow the poor windmill bastard into the drink with a single 20mm cannon shot . . . and I suspect they will get around to that soon enough.

However, I am necessarily drawn into history, and the corollary image of F-4 Phantoms and F-105 Thunderchiefs, designed for Cold War tactical nuke ops and high-altitude bomber interception, thrown against an ant-like string of coolies rolling bicycles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The very idea of a handful of superbly designed and expertly wrought high-tech systems trying to nose around in the weeds to kill a guy with a bike is manifestly absurd. But . . . that did not stop the "best and the brightest" from trying it.

Of course, they had to cover themselves. In testimony before the Senate, Daniel Ellsberg put his finger squarely on the blazing irrationality of the command hierarchy which reinforced the notions of the policy makers. He pointed out the species of "insanity" cultured at the top of an information structure bred to produce only those data which reinforce its own self-worth and which serve to rationalize its own existence. The top of the pyramid heard only what it wanted to hear, and it acted on what it heard. The resulting positive-feedback loop never saw Tet ‘68 coming down the Trail under the noses of the Thuds and Phantoms every night. Instead, it reveled in "body counts" and the specious assertions of politicians posing as combat commanders in- country.

Along the whole bloody saga, nobody of serious import ever questioned the fundamental political and ethical premises of the adventure. These premises were realized to be perfectly defective by kids in the streets and Muhammad Ali, while the insanity at the top brought us the madness of Nixon on his promise to "end the war". Admissions of mortal error were left to the reflection of old age, and McNamara’s Confession twenty-five years after the fact. I suppose we might be charitably grateful to McNamara for whatever degree of honesty that he was able to dredge up in posting that particular moment of truth. It is, however, a puny contribution not fit to wipe the dust off that black granite gash cut low in the Mall at Washington D.C.

What new gash are they cutting today?

Clearly, America is becoming a nation of prisons, rung up with the body counts of a new war. The news is full of every new Phu Bai, Cu Chi, Hue, and Khe Sanh . . . posed up in front of the TV cameras amid piles of white bags and bundled cash, analogs to the body counts of old. Images of every new seizure and arrest play to the lurid attention of news media in a concrete-bound effort calculated to ignore the deeper political and ethical questions which were, in fact, answered in the experience of Prohibition and Repeal. In the very same way that the nationalist implications of the Vietnam conflict were never addressed by the "best and the brightest" (but only admitted later by McNamara), the ethical premises of the War on the Twenty-First Amendment are completely beyond the understanding of the modern MACV ("Military Assistance Command - Vietnam") which conducts its "conflict" right here at home. The former blindness committed 58,000 American souls to death. The current ignorance does not labor against such grisly, weekly carnage, for its victims languish in myriad corners of darkness hidden from the popular understanding which gave rise to such spectacles as maimed Veterans heaving their combat medals at the feet of power.

Everyone understood that moment.

Today, very few understand, or even contemplate, the implications of a person whose life has been destroyed by a mandatory sentence for the "crime" of selling a bag of reefer to a friend. This is because that person never appears as one whose pursuit of his own values cannot be legislated against, without universal submission of the very concept of values to the insanity at the top of the command pyramid.

The American people have been sold on a new "domino theory". The same military machine serves the theory now, at home. In the same ways that escalation bred resistance in the Asian paddies, it has brought us increased imports (cocaine & heroin), domestic cultivation (marijuana), and domestic production (amphetamines and hallucinogenics) here in America. The dynamic is different (market response vs. political action), but the result is precisely similar. So is the command reflex.

"What?…the flow of supplies down the Trail is increasing?
Well, we’ll simply bomb ‘em into the stone age."

"What?…the flow of drugs has not abated? Well, lets get
NORAD and JTF-Bravo into the game. That will show `em."

The very same insanity of "body count" rationalization serves the purposes of command. The very same "strategic hamlet" approach to "pacification" turns up in government housing projects and neighborhoods throughout the land.

And, the very same cultured ignorance of the premises the "War" will remain to, someday, publish its "In Retrospect - The Tragedy and Lessons of [The Drug War]" under the pen of some new McNamara.

For now, however, scramble the F-16’s, and damn the consequences.