You Likee Tarter Sauce With That?

 

Pay attention generals, there’s gonna be a test later. I’m gonna cite three scenarios. The American Revolution, Vietnam, and Ukraine. Ok! What do these have in common? These three countries found themselves in a conundrum where it was assumed they would be grabbed by the ears by powerful enemies who would use their heads for a mop, and their butts for a broom. And, as history has shown, and indeed is showing right now, things didn’t work out. The powers that be and used to be went home with their tails between their legs, or soon will be, and the mice that roared are still roaring and political analysts are still feeding the same old archaic crap to your kids in school. Don’t you wanna know why? Well, I’m gonna tell you why. Now pay attention. Ever since Sun Tzu wrote his block buster hit, “The Art Of War” wise and educated men have followed certain rules as if Moses brought them down from the mountain while forgetting Field Marshal Helmuth Moltke’s immortal summation, “No plan of operations extends with certainty beyond the first encounter with enemy’s main strength.”

 

In layman’s understanding, the average Joe on Omaha beach on D Day had no reasonable expectation of surviving the beach. For all the planning and secrecy nothing was secure until Hitler stuck that pistol in his mouth. Now, I’m going to tell you the link in the three items cited above.

 —> You can’t beat an enemy that has no mechanism for giving up! <—

The word you’re looking for is insurgency. Insurgent simply defined reads as follows: An insurgent is a rebel or a revolutionary, someone who takes up arms against the authorities. Insurgent is from the Latin word “insurgentem,” literally meaning “to rise against,” so think of an insurgent as a fighter who rises against the people in power.

 

The American Revolution: A rag tag bunch of farmers took on the British Empire. All went well until George Washington handed British General Charles Cornwallis his face on October 19, 1781. God didn’t save the king that day!

 

Vietnam. Oh, don’t get me started. First off, that war made The Beatles. What else did John Lennon have to bitch about? I personally think he was on a vendetta for what happened to Cornwallis but that’s just me, ok? Of course, the military experts blamed it all on China. That seems to be the go-to answer for a screw up. You know. Great Wall and all that. But what happened was the Viet Cong. A rag tag bunch of kids who had no idea where America even was but knew for sure they didn’t want it there! Their body counts were through the roof but after ten years of “the same ‘ol same ‘ol” and America gave ‘em some helicopters and left! And what happened after that? My now deceased brother-in-law by my third ex-wife, Vietnam vet that he was, told me the little slant-eyed bastards figured out they could grow catfish in rice paddies and sold nuggets to Ryan’s Cafeteria. Ah so! You likee tartar sauce with that?

And The Darwin Award goes to:

VLADIMIR PUTIN!

Ukraine? For the life of me I don’t know why Ukraine doesn’t just invade Russia and be done with it.  Putin’s running out of Russians. He’s worse than Israel drafting Rabbis to fight another bunch of rag tag bikers, but that’s a take for another day.

 

Ok, let’s get down to the nut cuttin’. When we incinerated Nagasaki and Hiroshima America thought we were the masters of the universe. Fact of the matter was Stalin was on top of the Manhattan Project from the get-go and it just took him a while to find a way to squeeze an atom bomb into a vodka bottle. Then China got one, then England, France and the Zulus. Everybody had an Ear Splitting Schikle Boomer, but guess what? Nobody could use them because common sense told us to light that fuse would be the end of the world.

 

So here we sat. All dressed up and nothing to blow. But we still had war. There were Super Powers and Not So Super Powers. First and third world countries. Makes you kinda wonder where all the second world countries are. You know, countries with a McDonald’s but no secret sauce. But man being what he-she-it is we still needed a good war here and there. America would see some little tribe like Vietnam and conclude that they might need a little freedom over there, and by the time it was all over the people of said oppressed nation were just glad to be free of us, but we got a nice wall out of it.

 

And we couldn’t drop a twenty megaton on Mexico City just because we didn’t like the business the cartels were in. And for all the pomp and ceremony Putin can’t drop one on Kiev. Same goes for China or Won Hun Lo over there in North Korea. It’s one great big Mexican standoff. And that’s where insurgents come in. A bunch of guys with nothing better to do and not enough sense to quit. And Super Powers eventually run out of patience and go looking for someplace else to beat the hell up.

 

“And there will be wars and rumors of wars.” Wars: ie WWII. Rumors of wars: America’s invasion of Iraq and leaving a new flavor of religious nuts to replace the religious nuts we hung. The more things change the more they stay the same.

 

So, how do you beat an insurgency? You fight a war of subversion. Beat them with Madison Avenue. Give them all the meth they need and let the good times roll. Hell! What do the Mexicans do to us? Mexicans don’t buy that crap . . .we do! A few McDonald’s here and there, some ladies and Mohammed’s voice will become a distant memory. Trust me, I’m from Austin . . . I know!

 

The age of the Super Power or its demise is nothing new. Rome thought they had it all figured out until a bunch of Krauts came over the Alps, stomped a mud hole in their ass and walked it dry. The English? Let us pray. They had to come up with a rock band to replace the British Empire. And America? Y’all do know we’re arguing over restrooms, right? Jus’ sayin’.