It’s like the good ole days, buddy. 
One night this summer, like a dumbass bastard turfing redneck, a startling thought woke me from a deep sleep. Cuba.
The tiny nation of Cuba once brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihiliation, but now its dear leader is cold and withered and will die asleep in a hospital bed, quiescently passing the island to Moderacy, to his brother. During my time on Earth, Cuba has suffered and eaten itself, and as such is a bitter Smithsonian piece of the failed policy of Containment.
It’ll be a dystrophic foal born in a bog, gradually adapting to its own liberty.
Fast forward to Mesopotamia, 2012. Shithole bunker in Baquoba: satellite phone on his lap, Saddam Hussein pisses himself then ignominiously dies on a Rascal Scooter. His army is meat to the Iranian machine while the Republican Guard is quietly garroting every major Iraqi city, led by a vicious kid in the midst of a power struggle with his perverse gangsta brother.
To the Bush Admin circa 2001, taking Iraq? $1 billion. Garnering this breadth of data about modern military occupation at the cost of four, maybe five American lives a day? Priceless.
The overarching problem is these men in power have rarely seen modern battle, are not strategists or by any indication, forward thinkers at all! If I had a batphone to the Oval Office, I’d tell them to add another Cabinet member: Secretary of War and hire the office chock full of experts in modern warfare. God knows we’ll have enough to choose from after Beirut, Mogadishu, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq and Beirut.
Circle of Life, I guess. I just never thought after growing up around Beirut #1 I’d be looking through an album of dead friends, or that we’d still be dealing with this horseshit.