‘Knowing what you know today...’

I, like a previous president, spent the Vietnam War in the reserves. That is to say, I spent the Vietnam War stateside.

But unlike the aforementioned president, I had to attend all the meetings. The roughest action I saw was in a bar in San Pedro, so I don’t pretend to stand in the same company as those who saw actual combat and the carnage it brings. That being said, I’d like to offer a slightly different perspective on this Memorial Day.

In recent weeks, we have heard a question posed to potential presidential candidates. That question is: “Knowing what you know today, would you vote for the war in Iraq?”

It’s been asked of both party’s candidates, and the response has been amusing, in an infuriating sort of way. When the question was asked of all the viable Democratic candidates — every single one of them — she said she made a mistake and would not do it again.

On the other side of the asylum, the Republican response has been slightly more nuanced. The standard offering is: “Well, we’re better off without Hussein in power,” and let it go at that.

George W’s brother had one of the more convoluted responses when he said at first he would invade, as would Hillary Clinton. Someone in the Bush camp must have pulled Jeb aside and explained the question to him, and the difference between knowing what you knew then and knowing what you know now, because his next response was, “that’s a hypothetical question,” and he didn’t want to deal with hypothetical situations.

Actually Gov. Bush, most candidates deal with hypothetical situations all the time. It’s part of that campaigning thing you are doing.

He eventually gave us the grudging response that he probably would not have invaded Iraq. But along the way, he also gave us this: “If we’re going to get back into hypotheticals, I think it does a disservice to a lot of people who sacrificed a lot.”

That’s right, Governor. A lot of people have sacrificed a lot on both sides of the battlefield. There is nothing hypothetical about that.

The fact is, we engaged in a pre-emptive war, something we would normally condemn, on intelligence that was, shall we say, groomed to make the argument for invasion.

It’s interesting to see the right running from their past in 2015 as fast as they rushed toward it in 2003.

Gov. Bush, it seems plain to me that the real disservice to our fallen is to send more of our best to join them in a war that we started in the first place. There is no righteousness in that, and the body count keeps growing on both sides.

I would refer you to Mark Twain and his “War Prayer.” In this very short story, a “hypothetical” country is preparing for war. In a church, a preacher is delivering a prayer to God to watch over our troops and grant them glorious victory.

A gaunt disheveled stranger walks into the church and takes the podium. He says God has heard their prayers, and he is a messenger there to deliver a prayer of his own. This is his prayer:

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

“Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.

“It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said,” Mark Twain wrote.