Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Stuck In My Craw

I have a little something stuck in my craw, let's see if I can make sense of it. The United States Armed Forces are designed to kill people and break things, preferably until they beg us to stop with an unconditional surrender. When they aren't engaged in killing and breaking they have two jobs, the first to train for killing and breaking, the other is to stand around looking so frightening that other countries simply faint at the thought of crossing the USA.

Here is what I don't understand: We have a government filled with agencies and departments which have nothing whatever to do with killing and breaking things. Yet we have the military working overseas doing all kinds of things having nothing to do with their area of expertise. We had the Navy and the Army, as well as the Air Force down in Haiti passing out food, medicine and tentage awhile back. Why wasn't the peace Corps doing this?

Why wasn't the State Department and USAID doing all that nationbuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan? Isn't that their job? Oh, yeah, they are too busy being superior to those guys and gals in uniform.

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