I used to read Soldier of Fortune cover to cover.
During the suck, in the jungle and the desert, the mountains of eastern Europe and the plains of Africa. SOF traveled well. It understood the audience.
And in those pages, the questions kept coming back to the same place — the Thai-Burma border, and a Christian hill tribe called the Karen who were fighting a war nobody in Washington could be bothered to notice. The Burmese military had been burning their villages since 1949. The Karen burned back. They held triple canopy jungle against a professional army with tanks, artillery, and the complete indifference of the international community.
I thought of them as modern day crusaders. Fighting for Christianity and against the Communists. Pretty glorious. Plus I did not mind the triple canopy jungle. It was better than the desert. Did I mention the desert sucks? There is a reason it is sparsely populated.
So when the time came to figure out whatI will do next, I was torn between two choices — being a merc in Burma with the Karens or farming. The French Foreign Legion was out. The desert sucks. In the end I did none of the above.
I got married instead.
What brings this to mind is the events in Iran. I support Trump 100%. I don’t always agree with the way he does things, but I assume he has better intelligence than I have. OK, I worked with intelligence. They are highly overrated. Somewhere, I have the photos to prove it. Iran should have been dealt with decades ago. When you let a problem fester it does not go away. It gets bigger. Then you have a problem. Bingo, Iran.
I am also torn about the US being the world’s policeman. I don’t like it. But what are the options? We often debated it, and none of us liked it. When was the last world war? Don’t ask Illan. That is another rant.
I wonder if Trump has eyes on other regions after Iran. What is interesting about Trump — he may not see things as a constitutional issue. He looks at it as right or wrong. That makes for an interesting ride.
The Karen are still there.
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