Well, here we are, again. Another war built on misinformation, also known as lies, driven by domestic politics, incompetence and still, of all things, a surreal quest for a Nobel Peace Prize. Oh, and hubris, which Merriam-Webster defines as “extreme, excessive pride, arrogance, or overconfidence, often leading to a person’s downfall or ruin.” Or a country’s.

By the time I was born, we already had our toe in Vietnam getting in deeper as the French, who reclaimed their colony after World War Two, gave up in 1954 and left. After about 50,000 of our military personnel died in combat supporting the corrupt side of a civil war, we bailed, too, with little to show for it beyond the bravery of our line troops plus two or three more million dead among the French, their allies, and Vietnamese combatants and civilians. The Bush-Cheney Iraq war was sold on false pretenses and the idea the Iraqis would cheer our arrival making it easy for us to set up a new regime. Oopsie.