I don’t speak nor read Annamese, the language people and culture we in America identify most closely as Vietnamese. There was an iniative the CIA and Greenie Beanies collaborated on, Ap Than. I really don’t know if I’m using the right characters, don’t know how to pronounce and all I know is that it was a fantastic failure of American policy. It means “secure village”. Although it’s sometimes called hamlets. There’s a Beanie (Green Beret, and I’m sometimes told they don’t like the epithet) story about a second lieutenant with a map, a radio and an amazing lack of clue.
Translated into civilian speak: Lieutenant, where are you? Lt says “there’s a sign here, says Ap Than…
Reply: Oh, you’re at the corner of City Limits and No Parking (and the theme Dumbshit is only implied)
The secure hamlet idea is like the Green Zone which is what Fallujah was just declared to be. Then 4 days later Baghdad had a few (ahem) incidents. In the middle of the Anointed Puppet Dictator of Iraq doing a publicity stunt of walking through Fallujah. Why is all this predictable? It’s like a bad case of recurrent deja vu. Maybe it’s because it’s Been Done. Again and again ad infinitum. Like the flea poem.
Great fleas have lesser fleas
upon their backs to bite ’em
And lesser fleas have smaller fleas
and so, ad infinitum.
All we have to do, it seems, is swap the current stupidity with something just as stupid but hasn’t been implemented, at least since the last time it was. Just long enough so most of the pundits don’t have it in mind. Until somebody reminds them.
My brother has a suggestion for Mr Trump. Capture him and leave him in Mexico, Juarez beyond the Green Zone. Yeah, Juarez has a Green Zone. Let him find his own way back.
The policies overlap and mimic each other. There’s a math term, Recursive. It’s enough to give you a headache. Like a BB in the medulla oblongata. The Duh! Factor appears to be recursive. One serpent swallowing another which is in turn swallowing the first. Who wins?
The shame of idiocy is wasted against idiots. They’re not bright enough to realize how stupid their actions appear.
But often, enough to make it worthwhile, the spark is shown to someone, or -ones, maybe somebody you wouldn’t predict beforehand to be capable of enlightened thought.
Perhaps I’m in the midst of a social movement invisible to me, where the term Green Zone produces scorn in the mind of any who hears it. I hope so.
