Every war has its vets. Those who learned from the last one by being devoted to it are too old, too weak, and too disconnected by the walling of them out of the future, delving into the past instead as if it were a one-time unique event. So the War on Terror staff officers will now hit their laptops to write their version of Wikileaks. GW Bush, it seems, will come out with his before the end of the year and his fellow Republicans fear that his motto is: “every man for himself [explaining away the obvious].

The lesson is that there is no lesson because those who had been hiding their mediocrity from history with football pep-talk crap are the ones who get first shot at writing history of their catastrophe. But as things calm down and the really serious geriatrics get together with the really analytic youngsters we COULD get a lot wiser version….but we won’t because Americans Gov-types are hustlers all and hustlers hate nothing more than history and reason. I recall my encounter with a Pentagon brass on loan to the White House. We were doing well in dialogue until he got all declarative and threatened: “If you want meaningful dialogue with me you better not ever bring up that loooosssseeeerrr’s war, Vietnam.” I guess now he’s a retired corporate board member pretending to be relevant rather than just connected.

Milblogs are made for the dying to think they’re doing it right regardless, written by those who totally screwed up and trying to substitute can-do rha rha for analysis. It helps to be up on the current acronyms and projectile dimension, in millimeters, so you can seem authoritative when all you are is a survivor. And above all, the more tactical minutia, the more you can fog up the strategic picture of catastrophe! The Kegans-types will go into silence, by now clearly marked as bungling agitprops and the Biddles will go on confident that their dribble was obscure enough gibberish not to seem like total mis-predictions.

There will be a period of silence followed by a period of recrimination and then will come all the PhD theses, some very perceptive, some superficial like that of Petraeus. But together they will document the obvious….of course, two decades too late to even avoid another lesson un-learned.

And then there are us old guys who realize that waaaaaay back in the beginning, when we could have stopped this idiocy, we were gung-ho-pro because we had to believe in something, only to later be contemplating suicide because we were soooo stupidly wrong, so helpless in fixing the tune we were singing and soooo guilty for the dead mom and dad soldiers, making for soooo MANY ORPHANS AND WIDOWS ON THE HOMEFRONT.

For a year now the civilians have been competing with the vets over entitlements. Everyone is “me first.” Meanwhile the Jihadis are also “me first” but for the glory of killing infidels and Taklfiris for Allah.

Obama is a political mechanic, sacrificing life and wealth to political advantage. So, once again we lose from ignorance and hubris.