"...remarkable, considering how long the war lasted and how intensely it was reported and commented upon, that there are really not very many lessons from our experience in Vietnam that can be usefully applied elsewhere ..." -- Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a 1975 memo to President Gerald Ford (quoted by Andrew Bacevich in Washington Rules

In other words:

Let's Already Do It Again

Let's already do it again
Let's write with no ink in the pen
On the paper no trace of the egg on our face
Let's already do it again

Let's start on our very next loss
With a coin and some dice and a toss
Let's forget this here game where we've come up so lame
The next time around we'll be boss

Let's hurry to do it again
With the chorus still shouting "Amen!"
Before we can think of the fact that we stink
Let's pour on the perfume and then…

Let's you and him get in a fight
Then we'll get involved for a night
Helping out here and there, we'll of course gladly share
What was yours that we've "earned" with our might

The brass needs a billet or two
And some soldiers in order to screw
A few jumbo jets and they've got no regrets
Not with CNN asking their view

They "can do," you see, though they can't
Rhetorically venting their rant
They talk a good show then the battle they slow
Making "long time" the footprint they plant

A "journey," they say, not a "race"
Attempting to save naked face
In four years and more, they've produced a "long war"
Of their "victory" -- no sign or trace

Let's unlearn our history now
And not ask about why or how
While still sort of numb and sufficiently dumb
Let's not any learning allow

We failed in Vietnam before
Despite all the blood, guts, and gore
Yet no fortune's vast for our leadership caste
To squander on warbucks galore

A syndrome we need to construct
To conceal the true fact that we're fucked
Our governing group has just stepped in the poop
Now they've got to deny that they've sucked

We need war to prop up the few
Who really have nothing to do
Their lack of a skill means that others must kill
To produce all the "metrics" they skew

The Worst and the Dullest, they paint
Every failure with their smell and taint
In a rut or a groove, they have set out to prove
What Tweedledee said "isn't" ain't

We've got the worst leadership team:
A truly mad, nightmarish scream
But screwing the pooch while a backside they smooch
To them seems like just a wet dream

Wherever they came from, who knows?
Incompetence in them just grows
They get us bombed stiff then they jump off a cliff
Demonstrating what already shows

We just hung a man in Iraq
Once gone, though, we can't get him back
Now without any rope, down the slippery slope
Our excuses get ever more slack

They talk of a "spike" and a "surge"
All to cover a fear and an urge
They've shot our last wad, now they've left it to "GAWD"
To figure out where next to splurge

They've had all the time that they need
To knock off the bullshit and screed
With their flat learning curve, they've one hell of a nerve
To demand more sick bodies to bleed

This ain't good and it's got to stop
Whatever they try at they flop
If left at the helm they'll just wreck the whole realm
In planting their dragon's teeth crop

So let us dismiss these vile men
Now mainly less rooster than hen
Before they can blow what at sundown they crow:
"Let's already do it again!"

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2007