Bertrand Russell. “Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.” [Quotes of the Day]

Carl von Clausewitz. “No one starts a war–or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so–without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how he intends to conduct it.”

I just finished reading the book, “We Soldiers Once… And Young” and recently read the book, “Black Hawk Down”.Both of these books are great “war” stories. Despite almost thirty years that separate the events, both stories are very similar. They are action packed with lots of blood and gore sandwiched between individual acts of heroism. The movie “Black Hawk Down” with its great cinematography and sound is in my opinion better than the book. However I found these great “war” books difficult to read in this environment of a pending war with Iraq. The tactical advantage of the United States in Viet Nam and Somalia was their technological superiority. The weakness of the United States remains its unwillingness to sustain casualties to achieve a military objective. All of this sounds too much like the current situation with Iraq. I doubt the current administration has the political stomach to fight an urban war like as they did in Black Hawk Down. They definitely do not want to repeat the political and military mistakes from Viet Nam in Iraq. If for no other reason than the current situation in Iraq, these are important books for you to read.